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BX 1754 .W6 1926 

Woods, Henry, 1854-1936. 
Jesus Christ, the exiled 
King 








Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2022 with funding from 
Princeton Theological Seminary Library 


https://archive.org/details/jesuschristexileOQOwood 


ee ee re 

| NOV 9S 1926. 
JESUS CHRIST “ceo. seu’ 
THE EXILED KING 






BY | 
REV. HENRY ‘WOODS, S.J. 


PROFESSOR OF ETHICS, UNIVERSITY OF 
SANTA CLARA, CALIFORNIA 


Bye HERDERV BOOK. CoO; 

17 SOUTH BROADWAY, ST. LOUIS, MO. 
| AND 

33 QUEEN SQUARE, LONDON, W.C. 1. 
1926 


ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
Printed in U.S. A. 


IMPRIMI POTEST 
Jos. M. Piet, S. J., 


Praep. Prov. Californien 


NIHIL OBSTAT 
Sti. Ludovici, die 21. Junii, 1926, 
Joannes Rothensteiner 


Censor Librorum 


IMPRIMATUR 
Sti. Ludovici, die 22. Junti, 1926, 
*k Joannes J. Glennon, 


Archiepiscopus 


Copyright 1926 
by B. HERDER BOOK COC. 


Vai-Ballou Press, Inc., Binghamton and New York 


TO 


JESUS CHRIST 


THe Kinc IMMoRTAL 
REJECTED BY THE WORLD 
REIGNING IN His CHURCH 

PROCLAIMED ANEW TO ALL MANKIND 


BY 
His VICAR 
Prus XI 


‘tx December, 1925 





PREFACE 


People accustomed to reflect have observed, 
not without wonder, how easily we accommo- 
date ourselves to conditions that, had they 
been conjectured beforehand, would have 
seemed impossible. If their introduction is 
very gradual the change is not noticed. We 
adapt ourselves day by day unconsciously to 
the almost imperceptible modification, and 
forget what we once were. Should some old 
book or newspaper put before us the world in 
which we moved some thirty or forty years 
ago, we take in the view at first half incredu- 
lously, then curiously, afterwards reminis- 
cently. But the reminiscence is an effort, and 
often such is the influence of the present as 
to make the memory a mixture of the reality 
with imaginations responding to our present 
environment. 

So the members of the Protestant sects have 


been drifting along a current of unconscious 
Vv 


v1 PREFACE 


change for many a year. Should one of them 
be shown clearly just what his denomination 
was in the second half of the nineteenth cen- 
tury, he would be startled on comparing it 
with what it is today. What has happened 
to the old ideas of vital religion, of conversion, 
of heaven, of hell, of the Atonement, of the 
Saviour Himself? They are hardly heard of 
today. Insome of the more advanced congre- 
gations they are as archaic, as are in scientific 
schools the ideas of seventy years ago. 

The next step would be to minimize the 
change. There were even then some bold 
spirits, questioning, doubting, restating. The 
natural tendency would be to transfer to them 
an atmosphere of the present time; to sup- 
pose in them the mental attitude of modern 
questioners, doubters, restaters; and to find 
comfort in the thought that after all the 
change is more apparent than real. 

This would be an example of reminiscence 
mingled with imaginations. The fact is that 
the Protestant religious world has undergone 
a most profound change, which may be 
summed up in a brief formula. It has lost 


PREFACE vil 


even that partial concept of Christ which once 
it held most sacred. It is to all intents and 
purposes, what it will soon be actually, a re- 
ligion without Christ. 

Take the articles of the Apostles’ Creed 
relating to Him. [Is there one that is not 
challenged with impunity by some leader of 
the Protestant world? Is the whole number 
taken collectively down to “Whence He shall 
come to judge the living and the dead” en- 
forced by any denomination, admitted by any 
congregation in its obvious and literal sense? 
The world, civil society, public life, has 
banished Christ. The Protestant denomina- 
tions accept the fact and are prepared to con- 
form to it. 

But there are yet many individuals who 
have not forgotten Him, who would lose 
anything rather than lose Him. There are 
many more who would gladly revive in their 
souls the Christ that is fading from them. 
On the other hand, there is one religion in 
which Jesus Christ lives and reigns unchanged 
from the beginning. ‘To all lovers of Christ, 
to all seekers of Christ the Catholic Church 


Vill PREFACE 


cries: ‘Here is your home. Here is your 
haven of rest, your harbor of refuge. Here 
alone, against all the influences of the age, 
you can find Him and keep Him, Who alone 
can keep you against the great day of His 
appearing.” 

To you I offer these pages designed, with 
the grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ, to put 
this truth before you. 

THE AUTHOR 


CHAPTER 


CONTENTS 


INTRODUCTION Ones 
Toe LHe oR VAS Facts 
II. Tue KIncpom . ; : 
III. THE ORGANIZATION OF THE Santee 
DOM ‘ 
ITV. AFTER PENTECOST . 
V. THE GREAT COUNCILS . 
VI. CONSOLIDATION OF THE KINGDOM . 
VII. CHRISTENDOM A Per a 
VIII. Tue Soctar LIFE or PL 
IX. THE Corporat Works oF MERcyY 
X. CHRISTENDOM AND ITs KING 
XI. THE PaAssinc or CHRISTENDOM 
XII. ‘We Witt Not HaAvE tH1is Man 
TO REIGN OVER Us” . Savors 
XIII. Crist CALLING IN THE NIGHT . 
XIV. CHRIST THE EXILE . 
XV. THe KiIncpom INVINCIBLE 
EPILOGUE 


Leo XIII.—Pivus XT: Coden OF 


THE WHOLE HUMAN RACE TO 


THE KING’s SACRED HEART . 
ix 


103 
117 





INTRODUCTION 


Up to about three-quarters of a century ago 
the popular mind admitted no question re- 
garding the origin of things. 


“All things bright and beautiful, 
All creatures great and small, 
All things wise and wonderful 

The Lord God made them all: 
Each little fower that opens, 

Each little bird that sings, 
He made its glowing colors, 

He made its tiny wings.” 


Thus a popular religious poet expressed in 
verse the teaching given to every child in 
every religious denomination, and in those 
days all teaching was mingled with religion. 
Secularism, pure and simple, was still to 
come. The how and the when of creation 
were matters of secondary importance. The 


great fact stood unquestioned, except in the 
xi 


X1i INTRODUCTION 


retirement of library or laboratory: God is 
the Creator of all things visible and invisible. 

In this the popular eye was fixed upon be- 
ings coming into existence and passing out of 
it under daily observation. The flower and 
the leaf, the insect and bird, the wild things 
of forest and plain, the domesticated of the 
farmyard, the house and the hearth, were in 
a special sense the creatures of God’s hand, 
the results of His constant creative activity. 
That He had created the everlasting hills, the 
changeless ocean, which saw the beginnings 
of mankind as they should last until its end, 
was so evidently true as to exact no attention. 
‘The sea is His (and) He made aig and) tae 
hands prepared the dry land,” was on every 
tongue. They were the image of His eter- 
nity. But, as the verse just quoted sings, the 
brilliant hue of the bloom of a day, the swift 
wing of the tiny bird of summer’s sojourn, 
revealed the Creator’s wisdom and power. 
Life, rather than mere existence, fixed men’s 
attention. 

Soon, however, arose teachers abounding in 
their own sense. ‘To say that God creates all 


INTRODUCTION Vani psew 


life around us,” they proclaimed, ‘‘means no 
more than that ages ago He created the first 
individuals of each species, giving them the 
power of propagating their kind by genera- 
tion.”’ ‘Thus came in what may be called the 
popular-science notion of creation, a tran- 
sient mode of communicating life belonging 
to the remote past, with generation as the 
permanently normal method for all succeed- 
ing time; so that whatever comes to life now 
is, so to speak, an hereditary creature only. 
Let us illustrate this. 

Most of us can remember the great beam- 
engines of the old paddle-steamers. ‘Today 
the engineers are buried deep in the hull. 
Then, with so much machinery above water, 
the engine-room was on the maindeck; and 
the curious and envious boy could look in on 
the engineer sitting comfortably in his chair. 
For the boy the starting of the engine was 
always interesting; the more so, because so 
dimly understood. The gong would ring 
from the pilot-house. The engineer would 
grasp a lever rising through the floor, move it 
vigorously now one way, now the other, and 


X1V INTRODUCTION 


thus set the beam going and the wheels turn- 
ing. Another ring, and by stopping the lever 
he would stop the engine. Tworings. Now 
he moves the lever in the opposite direction 
and the engine goes backward. Another stop. 
Then forward movement resumed. ‘To the 
first movement of the lever the steam re- 
sponded with a long hiss. At each successive 
movement the change of the lever is quicker 
and the hiss shorter, until this becomes but a 
short grunt. Then the jingle-bell tells that 
the vessel is on its course. The lever is re- 
linquished, the eccentrics, adjusted; the en- 
gineer takes to his chair, possibly to his 
newspaper, leaving the engine to do its work 
unaided. This gives a very fair notion of 
the relation between the Creator and the 
creature as gathered by the pupil from teach- 
ers who thought to improve on old beliefs. 
When the world set out on its time-long 
journey, the Creator started the machine. 
As soon as it was well in gear, He left it to 
run itself. 

But the older doctrine as embodied in the 
hymn was right. ‘The teacher, with his triv- 


INTRODUCTION XV 


ial mechanic-institute science, was hopelessly 
wrong. 

The new teacher would be scientific; and 
his science led him far astray. ‘The doctrine 
he would supplant made, for all its truth, 
no attempt at adequacy of expression. It 
was the echo of a past, that, steeped in the 
supernatural, had a clearer vision of God’s 
operation in his creatures, than obtains today; 
a faded tradition, one might say, of a tradi- 
tion handed down through all time from 
Eden itself. The tradition had been cor- 
rupted by idolatry. But that corruption was 
by way of exaggeration, not of negation. 
Purified by Christianity it passed unques- 
tioned until the rationalism of Protestantism 
obscured it. There it survived in the school 
of evangelical piety, that could not follow the 
revolt of the sixteenth century to its last con- 
clusions. But it survived in a rudimentary 
form only. Deprived of the light flowing 
from the fullness of faith, men and women 
were content to respond to the remnant of 
faith allowed them. To it was added natural 
reason, which perceived sufficiently that gen- 


XV1 INTRODUCTION 


eration by creatures can produce a creature 
only. Hence, granting every legitimate 
claim urged for it, they understood, however 
dimly, that generation can never free itself 
from the actual operation of the Creator as its 
principal cause; and, consequently, must 
always remain a mode of creation. 

The result of growing rationalism was the 
exaltation of Nature at the expense of God. 
Nature’s operation, Nature’s law, displaced 
the older divine operation, divine law. Soon 
the Creator, who had been tolerated as the 
starter of things, was forgotten. Nature was 
conceived as necessary, inevitable; its law, 
self-originating, absolute, yet unintelligent. 
Thus Nature became a despotic fatalism. 
The idea of a lawgiver, supremely wise and 
free, was lost. ‘The Creator in the Kingdom 
of His Creation, ruling all things according to 
the infinite wisdom of His providence, was 
extinguished, so far as the scientific world 
was concerned; while those who, in the words 
of the twenty-eighth psalm, enumerated His 
royal operations concluding with the empha- 
tic assertion: “The Lord remaineth a King 


INTRODUCTION XVii 


forever”, did so, comprehending but dimly, 
what during the long ages of faith had been 
to their fathers a most luminous truth. 

This obscuring of God’s Kingdom in Na- 
ture followed the more serious, the more 
immediate, the very essential error of the 
Reformation, the denial of the visible King- 
dom of Christ. We could show that the fol- 
lowing wasa moral necessity. This, however, 
would take us outside the scope of the present 
work. It is sufficient to introduce our study 
of the Saviour-King exiled by men, with the 
fact, that in the world is a universal revolt 
against God in the twofold Kingdom of Na- 
ture and of Grace which, could the creature 
prevail over the Creator, we should have to 
term successful. 





JESUS CHRIST THE 
EXILED KING 


GEAR LER af 
THE FUNDAMENTAL FACTS 


A fashion of exploring the popular mind 
by questions and answers came into use some 
years ago. People would be asked: What 
hymns have influenced you most? Mention 
the five books you like best. The answers 
would be tabulated, and some knowledge 
would thus be gained. Suppose this question 
put: What do you hold to have been the four 
chief facts of universal history? One can 
surmise how various would be the replies. 
The French Revolution, the Declaration of 
Independence, the Burning of the Pope’s Bull 
at Wittenberg, the Discovery of America, the 
Battle of Lepanto, the Norman Conquest, the 
Hegira, the Battle of Actium, the Crossing of 


the Rubicon, the Battle of Salamis, the 
I 


2 THE EXILED KING 


Founding of Rome, and fifty other such 
would be recorded. Yet it would always re- 
main true that during the unrecorded years 
there must have been many a great event de- 
termining the course of things for all time. 
Before Agamemnon’s day, says the poet, there 
were heroes as valiant, who, nevertheless lie 
buried in the long night of forgetfulness, be- 
cause they lacked their Homer to preserve 
their fame. | 

Out of all that diversity there could be no 
unanimity. The tabulation might result in 
giving a certain four the larger number of 
votes; but the others would retain their ad- 
herents. Not only would there be diversity 
irremediable, but there would also be the 
strange accident, that few, if any, would men- 
tion even one of the real four. The reason is 
that the true answer rests upon a living faith, 
rather than upon mere knowledge of history. 
Moreover, the answer gives facts so universal 
in their results, as to make clear that no al- 
legation of the possibilities of the ages before 
history began, can affect their supremacy. 

What then are the four facts? They are 


THE FUNDAMENTAL FACTS 3 


these, as generally known as they are 
generally ignored. First, the Fall of Man in 
Paradise. Second, the Incarnation of the 
Eternal Word at Nazareth. Third, the 
Death of Our Lord Jesus Christ on Calvary. 
Fourth, the Resurrection of Our Saviour 
from the dead. 

These four are no local happenings, no de- 
terminants of a single people’s destiny. They 
go back, not to the first years, nor to the first 
days, but to the very first hours of the human 
race; and in their activity they reach out to 
the end of time. Not a human being, 
whether man, woman or child, escapes them. 
They are more than an influence. They en- 
ter into the very inmost being, both of the 
individual and of the race. Any natural 
event, however great in itself or wide in its 
influence, seems to follow the natural law of 
activity radiating from a central point. It 
diminishes in the intensity of its application 
to the individual, as the distance from the 
source increases, and this in proportion to the 
square of the distance. With our four great- 
est facts the case is the contrary. Adam’s sin 


4 THE EXILED KING 


reaches the infant born today as keenly, as 
unerringly, as overwhelmingly as it did the 
immediate offspring of our first parents. The 
Passion and Death of the Incarnate Word 
work in the infants regenerated today no less 
efficaciously, than in Adam and Eve restored 
in the beginning, and in the thief renewed 
by the dying Redeemer’s word. The Risen 
Saviour’s victory over death is as potent to 
open heaven to the dying Christian now, as 
it was for those whom He carried with Him 
in his triumphant Ascension. “I am with 
you all days, even to the consummation of the 
world”, is the promise of ‘the Lamb slain 
from the foundation of the world’”.? The 
promise is of immediate presence, of the im- 
mediate exercise of the activities of super- 
natural life, not of an influence only of a deed 
long past reaching down through all the by- 
gone years. ‘For as in Adam all die, so also 
in Christ all shall be made alive’’.* All die 
in Adam, not by imitating his transgression 


1 Matt. xxviii, 20. 
2 Apoc.* xiii, <8: 
Sa Corwxy, 22: 


THE FUNDAMENTAL FACTS 5 


but by participating in his sin; so all are re- 
stored in Christ, not by pleading a distant 
redemption, but by experiencing the opera- 
tion of Him who is able to subdue all things 
to Himself.* 

From these fundamental facts on which all 
God’s providence turns, we gather His loving 
purpose in creating man. In the first place 
man is created for happiness, perfect and 
eternal, a happiness this world can not give, 
a happiness reserved for the life to come. 
Nor is this happiness of the merely natural 
order; namely, an endless joy in the percep- 
tion of the Divine goodness and beauty as 
revealed in the perfection of the natural 
creature restored to its original condition. 
God raised man to the supernatural order, 
making Himself the supreme happiness of 
His creature, to be attained, not indirectly 
from any apprehension, however perfect, of 
the creature, but by the direct vision of the 
Godhead. ‘We see now through a glass in 
a dark manner; but then face to face. Now 
I know in part, but then I shall know, even 


4 Philip. iii, 21. 


6 THE EXILED KING 


as | am known”’.’ But this glorious destiny 
is to be attained by way of merit. Having 
made men rational, God made him naturally. 
free. Raising him to the supernatural order, 
God would not deprive him of the very crown 
of his natural perfections. Life, therefore, 
in this world is given him as the period of his 
probation. ‘‘God made man from the begin- 
ning, and left him in the hand of his own 
counsel”’.® 

Secondly. ‘To this supernatural destiny hu- 
man nature had not even the shadow of a 
right. God chose in His wisdom to confer 
it as a free gift upon our father Adam, whom 
Fle constituted head of the human race. By 
Adam it was to be preserved and transmitted 
to his descendants. Hence, losing it in his 
sin, he lost for all what God had given him 
for all. ‘The supernatural end was forfeited ; 
and with it, the supernatural life. Man fell 
back into the purely natural state. This, 
inasmuch, as it was contrary to God’s good 
will, was an effect perpetuating forever the 


Pixy Cor, (xtit 22, 
6 Ecclus. xv, 14. 


THE FUNDAMENTAL FACTS 7 


transgression which caused it. It was a state 
of sin, affecting first the nature, and through it 
the individual, shutting out each from the 
beatific vision. It was the universal death 
of the supernatural life, “As by one man sin 
entered into the world and by sin, death; and 
so death passed upon all men in whom all 
have sinned”’.” 

Thirdly. God could not forget that He 
had created man for Himself. Infinitely 
merciful, He would not leave him in his 
wretchedness. He remembered that man was 
but clay. This the Wise Man understood, 
addressing God so beautifully in the words 
God had given him: “Thou lovest all 
things, and hatest nothing which Thou hast 
made. . . . Thou sparest all, because they are 
thine, O Lord, who lovest souls.” °® But hav- 
ing created man to attain supernatural beati- 
tude by way of merit, God would not restore 
him otherwise than by satisfaction and mer- 
itorious redemption. This man could not 


TRON. -V,. 12. 
8 Job x, 9. 
® Wisdom xi, 25, 27. 


8 THE EXILED KING 


give. It was beyond any angel’s power. To 
restore what only the Creator could effect, 
called for a renewal of the creative act. 
Hence for St. Paul the man redeemed in 
Christ is a “new creature” *° not by any figure 
of speech, but in the sense of our Lord Him- 
self: ‘Except a man be born again of water 
and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the 
Kingdom of God’. Wherefore what no 
creature could do, God would do Himself. 
“God Himself will come and save you”.’? 
Hence the incomprehensible contrivance of 
Infinite Wisdom and Love. The Second 
Person of the Blessed Trinity will take to 
Himself human nature, so uniting it to the 
Divine Nature under His single Personality, 
that the human operations of the God-Man 
will be themselves divine and human. They 
will be divine, beause the acts of the Divine 
Person. They will be human, because per- 
formed in human nature. God will be born 
for man. God will live and labor and teach 


a 2 COL Events, 
11 John iii, 5. 


22;18a,e XXX u Aa, 


THE FUNDAMENTAL FACTS 9 


and suffer for man. God will die for man. 
God will merit pardon and rehabilitation for 
man, “blotting out the handwriting of the 
decree that was against us, fastening it to His 
cross’’.*® And all this will He do in His hu- 
man nature, “being seen on earth and con- 
versing with men”’.** 

“We are buried together with Him by 
baptism unto death. . . . For if we have been 
planted together in the likeness of His death, 
we shall be also in the likeness of His resur- 
rection”’.*® ‘The resurrection of Our Lord 
Jesus Christ is the fourth great fact of the 
whole human race. In His shameful death 
the Saviour restored mankind, conquering in 
what seemed defeat. He perfected his work 
in rising from the dead, thus triumphing over 
death and hell, opening Heaven to the re- 
deemed and once more inviting all to enter 
into bliss. $ 

On these facts rests the Christian Faith. 
For each individual it means that in Adam 

43-Col. ii, 14. 


14 Baruch iil, 38. 


15 Rom. vi, 4, 5: 


10 THE EXILED KING 


he lost the supernatural life to which God 
had destined him, and that God grants him 
no place in the life of the purely natural order. 
He lives the brief span of this mortal life, 
as incapable of regaining the lost supernatural 
life, with which all his hopes of eternal hap- 
piness are bound up, as was Lazarus of rising 
by any power of his own from the tomb. He 
is dead, and, as the Apostle says, dead in 
sin.’® ‘To that life he is restored through the 
merits of Christ. His restoration is a resur- 
rection more wonderful than that of Lazarus, 
since the supernatural begins in man with a 
wonder all its own. He is a new creature 
with powers, operations, relations, obligations 
the natural order in its highest development 
could never have known. ‘This and this only 
was the Gospel preached by the Apostles, for 
which they toiled and suffered and died. 
This which they preached, their hearers re- _ 
ceived without gloss or reservation. ‘Now I 
make known unto you, brethren, the Gospel 
which I preached to you, which also you have 
received, and wherein you stand; by which 


26s COP KV, 22-0) eDD.oll ts 


THE FUNDAMENTAL FACTS 11 


also you are saved if you hold fast after what 
manner I preached unto you, unless you have 
believed in vain”.*” “This Gospel in its utter 
integrity with all its content of dogma is for 
you and for me either everything or nothing. 
If true, it is the certain pledge of eternal life. 
If it be false, I have preached in vain and you 
have believed in vain. Jn vain have I fought 
with beasts at Ephesus. In vain did I heed 
the vision of Damascus. In vain have I suf- 
fered and labored. And you too have la- 
bored in vain, have been steadfast and 
immovable under trials and persecutions in 
vain”. The Apostle did not hesitate to put 
the inevitable alternative. ‘He knew Whom 
he had believed”; and with God’s grace, he 
would “fight the fight”, he would “keep the 
faith”, until he should “finish his course” 
triumphing under the executioner’s hand.*® 
He knew, too, “‘the patience and faith of the 
saints’’,'? ready in “this world to endure dis- 
tress”, looking with confidence on Him “who 


PMT COs. XV, 2, 2. 
12. Lim. 1,0123 \iv, 7: 
19 Apoc. xiii, 10. 


12 THE EXILED KING 


had overcome the world”’,*® Jesus, the author 
and finisher of their faith’’.** 

Christianity, then, in its Divine Founder, 
in His Apostles, in His disciples won to Him 
by His word; is essentially dogmatic. It is 
therefore, unchangeable. It is the word of 
God, ‘in whom there is no change nor shadow 
of alteration’’,*” given to man to establish him 
in sure hope. “It is the substance of things 
to be hoped for, the evidence of things that 
appear not”.** Immutability must be its char- 
acter. This same unchangeableness in God’s 
revelation was proclaimed to Moses from the | 
burning bush, as the necessary and sufficient 
motive to undertake with all confidence the 
humanly impossible, the freeing of his people 
from the yoke of Egypt. He asked for a sign 
of his mission. A sign was given. But it 
was to appear only after the mission had 
been accomplished. ‘‘When thou shalt have 
brought my people out of Egypt, thou shalt 
offer sacrifice to God on this mountain”. 


20 John xvi, 33. 
21 Heb. xii, 2. 
22 James i, 17. 
23 Heb. xi, 1. 


THE FUNDAMENTAL FACTS 13 


That this sign might be accepted without hes- 
itation the Divine Sender gave to Moses and 
the Israelites alike the pledge of His un- 
changeable Omnipotence in the formula too 
sacred among the Jews for utterance, “J am, 
whoam’’. Say to those asking: “He whots 
hath sent me’’.** ‘This wonderful foundation 
of Israel’s national existence in the unchange- 
able God, about to fulfill the promises that 
the holy patriarchs had saluted from afar,”® 
was in the inspired mind of St. Paul when he 
rebuked in the Corinthians, what might seem 
to be only a remote suspicion of change in 
their teacher, touching, not the doctrine, but 
a matter indifferent in itself, and to be deter- 
mined according to practical utility. But 
God, who sees the heart, goes beneath mere 
appearances; and under His inspiration the 
Apostle gives the solemn warning: “The 
things that I purpose, do I purpose according 
to the flesh, that there should be with me, It zs, 
and Jt is not? But God is faithful, for our 
preaching to you was not J¢ zs, and I¢ zs not. 


24 Exod. ili, 12, 14, 
25 Heb. xi, 13. 


14 THE EXILED KING 


For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was 
preached among you by us was not, Jt zs, and 
It is not, but It is was in Him. For all the 
promises of God are in Him. Itis”.?® 

The Gospel of Christ is thus identified 
with the unchangeable Christ. It is as 
broad, as comprehensive, as immutable, as 
Christ Himself actually revealing it. In 
this sense the convert of apostolic times to a 
religion brought from heaven by God Him- 
self, a religion, therefore, necessarily com- 
plex in its perfect unity, understood the ex- 
pressions, ‘‘to preach the Lord Jesus’, “to 
believe in the Lord Jesus Christ’, “I believe 
that Jesus Christ is the Son of God’’, “to be 
baptized in the name of Jesus”. In the same 
sense must we take them, not in that narrow 
sense which came in with the Lutheran doc- 
trine of salvation by faith. Of this, as we 
shall see, and as three centuries of experience 
have proved, the logical consequence is in- 
difference to all dogma. 

Only for such dogmatic and unchangeable 
Christianity did the martyrs die, dying as a 


262 Cor. i, 17-20. 


THE FUNDAMENTAL FACTS 15 


duty, dying because the option lay between 
death opening heaven, and apostasy casting 
into hell. Under modern conditions this is 
inconceivable. Here and there in the vari- 
ous sects one or another could be found, no 
doubt, willing to die for Christ. But could 
there be that unanimous sense of obligation 
amongst those who have learned to look to 
pragmatic values, rather than to dogmatic 
teaching in the contending sects? Only the 
supernatural conviction of faith and of its 
obligatory force, could produce the white- 
robed host innumerable bearing the martyr’s 
palm.** 

From this consideration that no juggling 
with words can weaken comes the necessary 
conclusion that the so-called Christianity of 
the sects, the popular Christianity of today, 
is not the Christianity of Jesus Christ. 
Christianity is no mere civilizing influence. 
Nor is it a supreme ethical system to raise 
men to a higher level than that attainable by 
the followers of Mohammed, Confucius or 
Buddha. Its fruit is not culture or refine- 


“7 Apoc.. vil, 13); 14. 


16 THE EXILED KING 


ment of manners. Its claims are not satis- 
fied by means of hospitals, orphanages, ref- 
uges for the infirm and the aged; by peace 
conferences, leagues for arbitration or No- 
bel prizes. Even private beneficence on a 
scale so large as to be public, even universal, 
in its effects, is not Christianity. All these 
are in some way connected with Christianity, 
as what follows is influenced by what has 
gone before. They testify to some survival 
of a Christian tradition of practical life. 
But Christianity is of a nature all its own. 
It is not confined to any place or time or 
race or social condition. All these are of this 
world, things of time. Christianity is of 
eternity, of the world to come. ‘These make 
up the temporal life closing for each with the 
grave, for all with the voice of the archangel 
and the trumpet of God.”* Christianity will 
begin in its fullness for each only when time 
shall be no more and this mortal shall have 
put on immortality.” Look into the churches 
of today, listen to the words of their preach- 


ZT neSS. Way, 92 Se 
ao COT Ue aces 


THE FUNDAMENTAL FACTS 17 


ers. Where are the words of eternal life? *° 
Yet Christianity is eternal life; or the Gospel 
is a lie. And what is life eternal? He shall 
tell us who came from Heaven to bring life 
and immortality to light. “This is eternal 
life, to know Thee, the only true God and 
Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent’.** Alas! 
This life-giving knowledge is vanishing from 
amongst men outside the Holy Catholic 
Church where Christ the King reigns supreme 
in His Vicar, whom he has appointed its in- 
fallible guardian and teacher. 

The Kingdom of Christ on earth, its nature, 
its authority, its consummation in heaven is 
the difference between the true Christianity 
and the false. We can know Christ only in 
his Kingdom. Let this, then, be our study. 


80 John vi, 69. 
31 John xvii, 3. 


CHAPTER II 
THE KINGDOM 


That the Redeemer established a Kingdom, 
is perfectly clear. St. John the Baptist 
preached penance in preparation for the 
Kingdom of God close at hand. Our Lord 
began His public life with the preaching of 
the Gospel of the Kingdom. He sent His 
apostles and disciples to preach the Kingdom 
of Heaven. He declared positively to Pilate 
that He was a King. The Apostles, too, after 
Pentecost preached the same Kingdom. In- 
deed on every page of the New Testament 
this Kingdom is inscribed. To explain the 
nature of this Kingdom down to its last detail, 
is a long affair, too long for such a book as 
this. But it is long, not because of any ob- 
scurity in the fact, but on account of the 
universality, the perfection, the eternity of 


this Kingdom of Kingdoms, that make its 
18 


THE KINGDOM 19 


comparison with any earthly Kingdom of but 
the widest analogy. 

Suffice it then to say that Our Lord did not 
use the term figuratively. The Kingdom He 
announced and established was a real one, of 
which He was the real King, giving His ever- 
lasting law for the common good of all man- 
kind, promulgating and vindicating it. So 
the Archangel said: ‘The Lord God shall 
give Him the throne of David His father”’.* 
It was an eternal Kingdom. For the Arch- 
angel continued: ‘‘And He shall reign in 
the house of Jacob forever, and of His King- 
dom there shall be no end”. This St. Paul 
confirms, applying to the Incarnate Word the 
Psalmist’s prophecy: Thy throne, O God, is 
forever and ever, a sceptre of justice is the 
sceptre of Thy Kingdom”.** It differs from 
the kingdoms of this world. These, dealing 
directly with but the exterior order, reach the 
interior order of the human will indirectly 
only and remotely; while Our Lord’s King- 
dom deals directly with this interior order, 


82 Luke i, 32. 
83 Heb. i, 8. 


20 THE EXILED KING 


and through it with the exterior order; which 
exists only for the service and perfection of the 
interior. “My Kingdom is not of this world. 
If my Kingdom were of this world my ser- 
vants would certainly fight, that I should not 
be delivered to the Jews. But now my 
Kingdom is not from hence’’.*4 

This fundamental distinction between every 
human political society and the spiritual 
Kingdom, is too often used to deduce the 
superiority of the former, or at least its inde- 
pendence,—conclusions wholly unwarranted. 
The exterior material order is, it is true, its 
special field. Nevertheless human authority 
can not exercise itself humanly even in 
material things without spiritual aid. It 
might, of course, compel obedience. But this 
would be not only barbarous, but destructive 
also of the very nature of society; which is 
essentially a union of wills subject to superior 
authority. Public authority has, then, a right 
to interior consent. But how can it enforce 
it? It can not penetrate into the interior of 
each individual and see whether he is giving 


84 John xviii, 36. 


THE KINGDOM 21 


a whole-hearted obedience, or a mere exterior 
conformity to avoid punishment. The right 
of society in this matter is safeguarded by the 
obligation of the individual, his obligation to 
his Creator, who, creating man social in his 
nature, bound him by the law of obedience, 
of which he reserves to himself the sanction, 
to be exacted in the life to come. From this 
appear the dependence of all temporal so- 
ciety, however powerful, however rich in 
material resources; the superiority of the 
spiritual Kingdom; and how far from the 
truth is the too common notion that it has 
nothing to do with temporal affairs. More- 
over, since man’s destiny is eternal, to be 
worked out in time by the just use of this 
world, it follows that the things of time, even 
the state itself, are for him means furnished 
by God for the working out of that destiny. 
In this work the spiritual Kingdom is his 
legislator, protector, guide. To it he turns 
for the help no human power can give. Con- 
sequently in its operations, even the most 
essential, which are certainly outside the di- 
rect functions of the spiritual Kingdom, no 


22 THE EXILED KING 


state has such an independence as to despise 
the admonitions of the spiritual authority or 
to ignore its judgments. 

From this we learn that Our Lord’s King- 
dom is a Kingdom, not figuratively nor by 
analogy, but in the strictest sense; in a sense 
so perfect, so exclusive, that should one seek 
to introduce analogy or figure, such would 
have to be applied to the temporal body rather 
than to the eternal society, the just type of 
the well-ordered human state. 

This Kingdom is eternal. It begins on 
earth: it is perfected in heaven. On earth, 
like every terrestrial society, it has its author- 
ity. Though its law is love, it is still a law; 
against which our fallen nature is at times 
inclined to rebel. Though its authority is 
that of a father, it is nevertheless coercive in 
regard to those who will not keep the law. 
In heaven the law gives place to pure love 
of the King, and to a service given through 
love, a service full and complete. There 
coercive authority yields to the beauty of the 
King seen face to face in all His glory. “We 
see now through a glass in a dark manner”; 


THE KINGDOM 23 


and because we see darkly, we fall short of 
the perfect love which is the fulfilling of the 
law; and so authority must support the law of 
love with the law of fear. “Then I shali 
know even as I am known”; ** and, with all 
that is imperfect, the law of fear shall pass 
away. The beatific vision binds the will to 
God’s service. In it the intellect reads to the 
last detail the service to be paid, declaring 
it supremely good. This service supremely 
good, the will leaps to embrace and to dis- 
charge. Thus is attained absolute social per- 
fection, wills innumerable united in sweetest 
harmony by the simultaneous possession of the 
one infinite Good. Whether you say that in 
heaven authority vanishes, as something ter- 
restrial made necessary by the imperfection of 
mortal man; or whether, and, perhaps, more 
exactly, that in the sweet informing of the 
will by the vision of God is found authority 
in its purity, substantial, not participated, in 
its essence, not merely in its exercise, it will 
be forever true that, what was imperfect in 
the Kingdom of Christ, as established on 


853 Cor. xiii, 12. 


24 THE EXILED KING 


earth, shall have gone forever; that the mili- 
tant Kingdom, delivered up to God and to 
the Father, shall have found its fulfilment 
in the Kingdom triumphant, in which God 
isvalleinvalls? 

No one can fail to see that as man by reason 
of his heavenly destiny, to which all other 
things of earth must be subordinate, is chief 
among terrestrial creatures, so the Kingdom 
of God, though here below but the planted 
seed, as it were, to reach full growth and 
fruition in heaven, is notwithstanding essen- 
tially superior to any society, however power- 
ful, however widespread, however closely 
organized, that finds its perfection on earth. 
The seed germinating in the soil to attain its 
perfection of leaf and flower, of fragrance 
and fruit in the upper air, is by its very 
vital principle superior to the natural ele- 
ments of the soil. Its native home is in the 
light. The darkness is but its place of so- 
journ. Yet it dominates the lower elements, 
taking from them what it needs to develop its 
glad life beneath the sky. So the Kingdom 


86 Cor. xv, 24-28. 


THE KINGDOM 26 


of Christ, existing on earth among men and 
for men, uses the elements of this world to 
prepare men for the society of heaven. It is 
therefore, visible among men, with a visible 
authority, a visible ministry; it uses a visible 
legislation, it possesses and employs material 
things. 

But for all this it is a spiritual society. 
Civil society deals with material things as 
its proper function. In this its power and 
exercise is limited only by the laws of order. 
Territories, cities, forests, plains, fisheries, 
mines, armies, navies, palaces, fortresses, all 
belong to it by the very nature of things. It 
can establish or abolish, buy or sell, give or 
exchange with perfect freedom and full do- 
minion; for in these things is its very life. 
With them it begins; and when they come to 
an end, it too must disappear. Not so the 
Kingdom of Christ. It enters the material 
order, because this is necessary to its spiritual 
function. The limits of that necessity are the 
limits of its possession of worldly goods. It 
has dominion against any earthly power. But 
its dominion is not free. It is a stewardship 


26 THE EXILED KING 


rather, governed in its administration, not by 
temporal considerations so much as by spirit- 
ual. An example will make this clear; and 
we shall seek it in what is, perhaps, most of- 
fensive to the modern political world, the 
Pope’s claim to temporal power. 

“Why”, one asks, ‘does not the Pope con- 
form to the new order of things? ‘The princes 
of Modena and Parma, of Tuscany and Na- 
ples, have done so. Why does he alone of 
all the old Italian sovereigns hold out? He 
claims a power superior to that of any other 
temporal ruler, whether king or emperor. 
Yet, during all these years, when asked to do 
what they have done, his answer has been: 
“Non possumus’, ‘““Wecan not”. The reason 
is that, though the Pope’s power, even as a 
temporal ruler, is greater than that of any 
other sovereign, it is, nevertheless, adminis- 
trative only. Its greatness in itself, its limi- — 
tation in its exercise, come from the same 
‘source, that the Kingdom of Christ is spirit- 
ual, and in it the Pope is but the Vicar of the 
King. Because the Kingdom is spiritual, its 
title even in material things, is essentially 


THE KINGDOM 27 


superior to any earthly title. Again, because 
it is spiritual, its possessions are not the Pope’s 
in absolute dominion. He is Christ’s steward 
to administer all for the spiritual welfare of 
mankind. The temporal power was mani- 
festly for the spiritual welfare. ‘Therefore, 
the Popes could not, as did the secular 
princes, abandon it from merely temporal 
considerations. 

‘But we understand that Pius XI. is about 
to reverse the policy that had prevailed since 
the time of Pius IX”. In the first place, 
it was never a question of policy but of prin- 
ciple. In the second place, only Pius XI. 
knows what he is going to do. Thirdly, 
whatever he does, will not be a reversal of the 
principle of his great predecessors, namely, 
that such temporal matters are to be admin- 
istered purely with a view to the spiritual 
profit of men. We may remark, however, 
that things have changed greatly in the course 
of more than fifty years. On the one hand, 
with the exception of the Papal States, the 
Kingdom of Italy is certainly legitimate, and 
its rulers maintain, with apparently good 


28 THE EXILED KING 


reason, that to give up Rome would precipi- 
tate revolution. On the other, the usurpation 
of more than half a century has this result, 
that the third generation of Italians are now 
growing up deprived of adequate religious 
teaching, and encouraged by public opin- 
ion in the idea that the patriotic Italian 
must be hostile to the Holy Faith. What is 
God’s will for Italy? What, for the whole 
Catholic Churche This is the problem con- 
fronting Pius XI. He, and he alone, can 
solve it, for he alone is Christ’s Vicegerent on 
earth. But this must be said, that whatever 
solution is reached, whatever is granted to 
circumstances, will be a concession pure and 
simple by the spiritual power, from spiritual 
motives, made in the name of Our Lord Jesus 
Christ to the spiritual needs of the world. 
He who emptied Himself of His glory,*’ who 
came to earth and died that man might live, ~ 
will if need be, divest himself in His Vicar of 
temporal power, and, to revivify mankind, 
lead a dying life. But of the temporal power 
and the Vicar of Christ will then be true, 
81 Philip. ii, 7. 


THE KINGDOM 29 


what was true of Christ and His mortal life. 
He will lay it down for his sheep. No man 
will take it from him, but he will lay it down 
of himself.*® 


88 John x, 15-18. 


CHAPTER III 
THE ORGANIZATION OF THE KINGDOM 


We have said that the Kingdom of Christ 
has its root on earth, its full fruition in 
heaven. ‘There it will be conformed to the 
physical law of heaven, eternal rest in full 
possession of the infinite Good which is God 
Himself, changeless in His Eternity. ‘The 
four living creatures of St. John’s vision, 
“rested not day or night saying: Holy, Holy, 
Holy, Lord God Almighty, Who was, and is, 
and is tocome. And when those living crea- 
tures gave glory and honor and benediction 
to Him that sitteth on the throne and liveth 
forever and ever, the four and twenty ancients © 
fell down before Him that sitteth on the 
throne, and adored Him that liveth forever 
and ever’.*® So the Apostle expresses himself 
in the language of time. In reality the con- 


89 Apoc. iv, 8-10. 
30 


ORGANIZATION 31 


stant succession of moments has no place in 
the celestial city. There day and night, 
morning and evening are unknown. ‘The sun . 
does not rise and set to bring them, nor are 
successive months marked by a waxing and 
waning moon. “Night shall be no more, and 
they shall not need the light of the sun, be- 
cause the Lord God shall enlighten them and 
they shall reign forever and ever”.*° They 
shall reign forever, because the light of God 
is absolutely changeless. St. Augustine, dis- 
cussing the Psalmist’s words, ‘““Thy years shall 
not fail”, asks most profoundly: “What are 
those years that do not fail, if not the years 
which stand? If then the years stand, these 
are but one year, and this but one day; since 
this day has neither dawn nor dusk, and be- 
gins not from yesterday nor ends with to- 
morrow, but stands. You call that day what 
you will. If you wish, it is years. If you 
wish, it is day. Whatever be your thoughts, 
it stands nevertheless’’.** 

But let us leave heaven and its mysteries 


40 Ibid. xxii, 5. 


41 Enarr, in Ps. exxi, 6. 


32 THE EXILED KING 


and return to earth. Here the Kingdom of 
God conforms to the physical law of time, to 
man’s nature, and to the circumstances in 
which it was founded. It had its beginning, 
humble and restricted. It had its growth, 
vigorous and spreading. ‘The Kingdom of 
Heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed .. . 
which is the least indeed of all seeds; but 
when it is grown up It is greater than all herbs, 
so that the birds of the air come and dwell 
in the branches thereof”’.*? 

Every kingdom begins from the king’s ti- 
tle. If he has the right to rule, there is in 
the multitude the correlative obligation to 
yield willing submission. Jesus Christ had 
a twofold title to sovereignty. He was the 
Creator of men. ‘God, Who at sundry times 
and in divers manners spoke in times past to 
the fathers by the prophets, in these days hath 
spoken to us by His Son, by Whom also He 
made the world’’.** He was also the Re- 
deemer of men. In both cases the title was 
absolute. The creature, existing only by the 


42 Matt. xiii, 31, 32. 
43 Heb. i, 1, 2; John i, 1-3. 


ORGANIZATION 33 


creative word, was nothing without the Cre- 
ator: ‘“Thou hast made me as the clay, and 
Thou wilt bring me into the dust again’’.** 
The redeemed were slaves of sin; they have 
become the property of the Redeemer. “You 
are not your own; for you are bought with a 
great price’’,*° 

But there was an additional title, the right 
of conquest. Adam, in yielding to sin, had 
brought mankind under bondage to satan, 
who was not slow to consolidate the dominion 
he had usurped. In every ancient monarchy 
of historic times, Israel alone excepted, he 
was worshipped. His priesthood was an 
integral part of the body politic; their sacri- 
fices, an integral part of social action. In 
many cases the prince himself was supreme 
pontiff. In every case his public acts were 
inseparable from prior, concurrent, subsequent 
idolatry. The kingdom of satan was visible, 
organized, coextensive with the world. This 
alone should suffice to make one look for a vis- 
ible, organized, universal Kingdom of Christ 


44 Job x, 9. 


34 THE EXILED KING 


replacing it. The conqueror does not extin- 
guish the conquered kingdom: he transforms 
it into his own. We naturally expect what 
we actually find, the kingdom of this world, 
which satan had claimed to be his own, be- 
coming the eternal Kingdom of Jesus Christ.*® 

There were then two kingdoms in conflict, 
one of the conquered, whose age-long rule 
was about to perish; the other of the Con- 
queror, who was to reign forever: the one, 
the kingdom of darkness; the other, the 
Kingdom of Light.*7 The proclamation of 
this Kingdom was the declaration of war. 
On the issue turned the fate of mankind. 
For each man his fate rested with his own 
will accepting or rejecting the call of the 
Saviour-King, that carried with it the power 
enabling him to obey. We may not presume 
to attempt to sound the depths of God’s coun- 
sels. Nevertheless it is our bounden duty to — 
proclaim His adorable wisdom manifest in 
His work. Inthe war about to begin it would 
be most proper that the very nature of the 


46Tuke iv, 6; Apoc. xi, 15. 
ShCOLIA  I2teeok Peter 1 On Ras Ix ferris 


ORGANIZATION 35 


opening attack should be such as to declare 
unmistakably to the onlookers, whose interest 
in the result was so vital, the parties in con- 
flict, and the nature of the issue. St. Matthew 
tells us in general terms that Jesus went about 
all Galilee preaching the Gospel of the King- 
dom, and healing all manner of sickness and 
every infirmity among the people, so that they 
brought Him all kinds of sick persons, 
and those possessed by devils, and He cured 
them.*® 

Here certainly is discernible “the finger of 
God”.*® All the world then recognized the 
close analogy between the multitude of phy- 
sical diseases afflicting mankind, and the mul- 
tiplicity of man’s moral evil. Indeed, the 
world looked deeper; and acknowledged the 
more intimate relation between the two, of 
effect and cause. This the Roman poet un- 
derstood, 


‘‘Audax Iapeti genus 
Ignem fraude mala gentibus intulit, 
Post ignem ztheria domo 


48 Matt. iv, 23, 24. 
49 Exod. vili, 19. 


36 THE EXILED KING 


Subductum macies et nova febrium 
Terris incubuit cohors, 

Semotique prius tarda necessitas 
Leti corripuit gradum.”’ °° 


“Prometheus, greatly daring, by a cunning 
trick brought fire amongst men. After the steal- 
ing of the fire from heaven’s palace, famine and 
a host of diseases hitherto unknown brooded 
over the earth and death, once distant and slow 
in its inevitable approach, hastened its step.” 


None, however, knew it better by both doc- 
ument and experience than the Jews, who 
Sabbath by Sabbath heard from the scripture 
God’s promises of health and prosperity as 
the reward of obedience, and the converse of 
these as the vindications of the violated Law. 
The proclamation of the Kingdom of God, 
and the wholesale healing of disease carried 
at once a meaning to the Hebrew mind, which, 
if it erred somewhat in detail, was funda- 
mentally sound. Indeed, had the Jewish na- 
tion accepted the Redeemer, it is extremely 
probable that the proximate restitution they 


50 Hor. 1, ili, 27-33. 


ORGANIZATION 37 


yearned for, of the Kingdom of Israel, would 
have been a reality. 

St. Mark and St. Luke are more explicit 
than St. Matthew. They tell the first action 
of the opening campaign. Our Lord was 
preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom in 
Capharnaum. Among the hearers was one 
possessed, who cried out ‘“‘What have we to 
do with Thee, Jesus of Nazareth? Hast 
Thou come to destroy us? I know who Thou 
art, the Holy One of God”. Our Lord com- 
manded the evil spirit to be silent and to come 
out of the man. The devil obeyed; and the 
people were amazed, asking what is this new 
doctrine of this teacher, whom even the evil 
spirits obey? ** The evil spirit recognized 
the attack as no mere personal matter, but as 
directed against the whole kingdom of dark- 
ness. Personally he exclaims: “I know who 
Thou art’. On behalf of all his fellow- 
demons he protests in the plural number: 
“What have we to do with Thee? Hast 
Thou come to destroy us?” That is to say, 
hast Thou come to take away our power over 

51 Mark i, 21-27; Luke iv, 31-36. 


38 THE EXILED KING 


mankind; to confine us to the abyss; to de- 
stroy our Kingdomre ‘What new doctrine is 
this?’ ask the people. Soon it will be: “Is 
not this the Son of David?” * That is the 
Messias, the Restorer of the Kingdom. And 
Our Lord Himself will tell us the full sig- 
nificance of such wonders: “If I by the 
Spirit of God cast out devils, then is the King- 
dom of God come upon you”.** 

Our Lord organized His Kingdom for the 
war, choosing twelve Apostles, to whom He 
committed the mission with which He had 
come from Heaven. They too are to heal 
the sick.°* But first of all they receive the 
direct means of attack, “power and authority 
over all devils’’,*> which even the seventy-two 
exercised to the full.°® It is true that the 
Apostles’ mission might have been temporary. 
That it was not, but that it was permanent, 
we gather from their instructions. “Take 


bo Matt. xii, 23. 

53 Ibid. 28; Luke xi, 20. 

54 Mark iii, rs. 

Pe LUKeLIX, Seep Matt, iy et 
56 Luke x, 17. 


ORGANIZATION 39 


neither scrip nor staff”, ‘“Go not from house 
to house’’, and such like referred principally 
to the mission on which they were actually 
entering. What follows, beginning with: 
‘Beware of men’, contains general instruc- 
tions to direct their apostolate when the Lord 
should be with them no longer.*” ‘That these 
general instructions regarded the apostolate, 
to be observed by the Apostles themselves and 
communicated by them to such as they should 
send, appears sufficiently from this, that to the 
seventy-two, who represented the priesthood, 
and as such, would have no immediate gov- 
ernment in the Church, only the particular 
instructions were given. 

That Our Lord was establishing a visible 
Kingdom in which they were to be princes, 
the Apostles learned from their intimate con- 
verse with Him; so that thoughts and desires 
and ambitions of the higher places were fre- 
quent among them. Hearing that Elias had 
come already, the three chosen witnesses of 
the Transfiguration were persuaded that the 


57 Matt. x, 5-23. 


40 THE EXILED KING 


perfect manifestation of the Kingdom was 
Close at hand.** The others, with the multi- 
tude, seeing traces of glory still lingering on 
the Divine Countenance, and confirmed by 
the miracle of the casting out of the deaf and 
dumb spirit, easily fell in with this idea.*® 
To no purpose did our Lord discourse on His 
approaching Passion. ‘They were taken up 
with the question of who should be the great- 
est in the coming Kingdom.®° Shortly after- 
wards the promise of the twelve thrones; * 
the return from beyond Jordan on the last 
journey to Jerusalem; the crowds that fol- 
lowed; the wonders at Jericho, culminating 
in the conversion of Zacheus; the approach 
to the city,®* all, notwithstanding the Lord’s 
explicit assurance that no crown, but shame- 
ful death was waiting there, renewed the 
thought of the immediate restoration of 
the throne of David,** and the ambitions of the 

58 Mark ix, 10. 

59 Tbid. 14. 

60 Ibid. 32. 

61 Matt. xix, 28. 


62Tuke xvili, 33; Matt. xix, 29; Luke xix, r—-ro. 
63 Jbid. 11. 


ORGANIZATION 41 


sons of Zebedee.** Even the shock of the 
announcement that one of the chosen twelve 
was to betray the Lord, and the eager inquiry 
that followed, led, by a sort of revulsion 
among those unconscious of guilt, to the same 
ever-present question.*° With the Resurrec- 
tion was renewed the thought of the imme- 
diate establishment of the temporal Kingdom; 
nor did all the teachings of the forty days 
eradicate it. This was reserved for Pente- 
cost. ‘The last question they proposed to the 
Saviour, about to ascend’ into Heaven, was: 
“Lord, wilt Thou at this time restore again 
the kingdom to Israel?” *° 

The Apostles erred regarding the Kingdom 
in matter of detail. In this Our Lord checked 
them, letting them see, not only that their 
ideas were defective with regard to the future 
reality, but also that they were morally un- 
worthy of the Gospel of the Kingdom. But 
He did not explain to them definitely in what 
their error of fact consisted. This the very 

64 Matt. xx, 20; Mark x, 35. 


65 Luke xxii, 24. 
66 Acts i, 6. 


42 THE EXILED KING 


sublimity of the Kingdom forbade. None 
such had ever appeared. ‘The theocracy, even 
in its perfection under Moses, was hardly its 
foreshadowing. All the admonitions, all the 
instructions, those of the forty days not ex- 
cluded, were for the future, rather than for 
the present. ‘These things His disciples did 
not know at the first. But when Jesus was 
glorified, then they remembered that these 
things were written of Him, and that they 
had done these things to Him’’.%* Indeed 
nothing gives a clearer idea of the grandeur 
of the supernatural Kingdom of Christ, than 
the need, springing from its very nature and 
constitution, of the indwelling Holy Ghost 
to lead its rulers into all truth and to recall 
to their memory the words so often heard, 
but, until illuminated by that Spirit of light 
and grace, understood so inadequately.*® 


Yet there was no substantial error. The 


Apostles had from the beginning made up 
their mind that Our Lord was the Messias; 
that He was establishing a visible Kingdom, 


67 John xii, 16. 


68 John xiv, 16, 17, 26; xvi, 13. 


a ee 


ORGANIZATION 43 


the throne of David ‘‘ruling from sea to sea, 
and from the river to the ends of the earth”; °° 
that it was, “‘the mountain of the Lord’s house 
to which all nations were to flow”;*° a King- 
dom for all time,’* in which they were to be 
princes. So far was Our Lord from ever hint- 
ing at anything wrong in their idea, that He 
took the means most suitable to confirm it. 
That the Kingdom was not to be the old King- 
dom of Israel restored, but the Kingdom of 
David supernaturalized, passing from earth to 
heaven, from time into eternity;7* that of it 
one of their number was to be the earthly 
head, handing down to his successors the full- 
ness of the Apostolate; that he was to hold the 
keys of the Kingdom; to be the infallible or- 
acle of truth, the banisher of error, the unerr- 
ing judge of right and wrong; the firm 
support of his brethren; ‘** that upon it would 
depend the course of time itself; for when its 


$9 Ps, Ixxi, 8. 

Rae ll it, 3. 

Wi Iga.) xxxv,. 103) li, 11 ¢ lxi;,7; Dan) vil, 27: 

72 Matt. xiii, 43; xix, 28; John xvii, 24. 

78 John i, 42; Matt. xvi, 18, 19; Luke xxvii, 32; John xxi, 15, 
<7. 


44. THE EXILED KING 


mission on earth shall be completed, time 
shall be no more; ** all these were truths re- 
vealed, neither doubted nor denied; but too 
sublime to be grasped until the fullness of the 
Holy Ghost had been poured upon the chosen 
Twelve. 


74 Matt. xxviii, 19, 20; xxiv, 24. 


CHAPTER ly, 
AFTER PENTECOST 


Our Lord having ascended into heaven, 
the Apostles, obedient to His command, 
passed with some hundred of the principal 
disciples, with the Blessed Virgin Mary, and 
the holy women, into the retirement of the 
cenacle in Jerusalem to await the coming of 
the Holy Ghost. ‘The instructions of the forty 
days, if they had not removed all preconceived 
ideas regarding the nature of the Kingdom, 
had given a sufficiently clear initial notion of 
its organization. At the head of the little 
band was Peter, conscious of his dignity. 
One ignorant of God’s power to transform 
“the weak things of the world”** into the 
instruments of His purposes for men, could 
not have identified the chief rising authorita- 
tively amidst his brethren, requiring them to 


ae COT. 3, 27. 
45 


46 THE EXILED KING 


fill up the number of the Apostolic College 
and directing them in the operation, with the 
fisherman who, probably the second week 
after the Resurrection, had cast himself into 
the sea, to reach the feet of Him who was 
about to confirm to His chosen one, the 
supremacy on earth in His Kingdom. 

Reading the Apostle’s solemn address; *° 
perceiving the definite concept it exhibits of 
the divine plan; seeing how it makes the 
Resurrection of Jesus the proof to all the 
world of the Kingdom about to be proclaimed, 
one might feel constrained to ask, what more 
could the work demand? Why should men 
so enlightened by God, so ready for the work, 
await in patient prayer a further enlighten- 
mentr ‘They had but to preach Jesus Christ, 
‘Who was delivered up for our sins and rose 
again for our justification” ‘‘ that all men, 
“being justified by faith, might have peace 
with God through Him’’.’8 

Were Luther’s doctrine, for three centuries 


76 Acts 1, 15-22. 
*tRom. ‘iy,’ 25. 
Ce bi cir te: 


AFTER PENTECOST 47 


the entire substance of the Protestant message 
of salvation, the true word of God, the ques- 
tions would be hard to answer. But the sim- 
ple formula that satisfied once, satisfies now no 
longer. Protestantism has not only forfeited 
confidence, it has lost confidence in itself. 
Salvation by faith only, whereby we lay our 
sins on Christ, the vicarious sacrifice, is now 
rarely heard. But the word of the Lord must 
endure forever.’® Wherefore, Protestantism 
daily failing while the Catholic doctrine re- 
tains all its vigor, we may not refuse to see in 
the latter the unfailing word of God. Thus 
we understand in some way how Pentecost 
and its great gift entered into the divine plan. 
To preach Christ is more than to exhort men 
to lay their sins on Jesus, to believe that Jesus 
pays all the debt, and to fancy themselves 
saved by this belief. It is to establish them 
according to the revelation of the mystery 
kept secret from eternity, but now made man- 
ifest for the obedience of faith.*° It is the 
proclamation of the Triune God and all His 


79 Tsa. xl, 8. 


80 Rom. xvi, 25. 


48 THE EXILED KING 


work, in man’s creation, predestination, re- 
demption, justification, glorification. It is 
the doctrine of the grace that justifies and 
elevates and of its operations in the sacraments. 
It is the declaration of the grace whereby God 
works in us every good work enlightening the 
understanding, moving the will, crowning our 
consent with an eternal reward. It is to 
announce a complete system of government 
which God alone could originate, which, 
without the Pentecostal gift, the preacher 
could not begin to utter, the hearer could not 
begin to receive. 

Jesus Christ, then, is no mere vicarious 
sacrifice. He is the King in His Kingdom. 
St. Paul proclaims: “A faithful saying and 
worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus 
came into this world to save sinners’”’.** It 
is faithful beyond question, since: ‘God is 
not a man that He should lie nor the son of 
man that He should be changed”.®? That 
it is worthy of all acceptation is equally un- 
questionable; for “all have sinned and need 


Blige Limonl,. 1s 
82 Num. xxili, 19. 


AFTER PENTECOST 49 


the glory of God”.** It is the Gospel com- 
prehensively, as was the apostolic: ‘Believe 
in the Lord Jesus Christ”. It is not the Gos- 
pel in all its extension. It is rather the seed 
containing in its virtue the fullness of the 
tree of life. St. John the Baptist delivered 
his message: ‘Behold the Lamb of God Who 
taketh away the sins of the world’.®* Yet 
those who following Jesus abode with Him 
the few remaining hours of that day, learned 
in so brief a space that He was the Messias, 
the expected King, and heard addressed to 
Simon the first clause of the Kingdom’s con- 
stitution: “Thou shalt be Cephas, which is 
interpreted, Peter”.*’ The Baptist’s formula, 
therefore, contains the full Gospel of Christ, 
the Anointed. It is the foundation of the 
complete Gospel of the Messias, of the 
anointed King for whom all Israel was wait- 
ing. The Gospel, therefore, is the Gospel, 
not of Salvation only, but of Salvation in the 
Kingdom. 


83 Rom. ili, 23. 
84 John 1, 29. 
85 Thid. 41, 42. 


50 THE EXILED KING 


Thus the Apostles preached the Kingdom 
of God, in which Jesus Christ is Prince and 
Saviour.°® As we have seen, it is only by 
understanding this, that we can recognize in 
the constantly recurring phrase, “to baptize 
in the name of Jesus”, the formula not of the 
sacrament, but of subjection to the King. 
We must remember too that for Israel the 
Kingdom of God had a meaning neither 
figurative nor superficial, but a literal sense 
entering deeply into the very substance of the 
national life. To Apostle and hearer alike, 
the looseness of Protestant interpretation 
would have been unintelligible. Nor could 
they have allowed that the various senses in 
which Our Lord seems to have used the term, 
gave any justification for a meaning figurative 
only. They would have answered that the 
variety on which the modern interpreters rely, 
so far from giving any color of probability to 
modern ideas, was the natural result of the 
very reality of the Kingdom as Our Lord 
proclaimed it and His hearers understood it, 
complex in its unity of organization, touching 


$6 ‘Acts vill, /¥2° xix, 8% 'Xx, 24° xXvill, 23° Vv, 31 


AFTER PENTECOST fe 


its members, as such, in every supernatural 
element of their lives, in their call, in their 
formation, in their election, in their consum- 
mation. Indeed the hostility of the Jews to 
the Kingdom preached by Our Lord and His 
Apostles was not due to its reality and its 
imperative claim to obedience, but to the fact, 
a difficulty removed entirely from the Apostles 
themselves only by the Pentecostal gift, that 
it went counter to the purely terrestrial idea 
they had formed of it. We can trace in the 
Acts the gradual organization of the King- 
dom from Pentecost, until we see it perfect 
in the farewell words of St. Paul, on the sea- 
shore at Miletus, to the Ancients of the 
Church of Ephesus: “Take heed to your- 
selves, and to the whole flock, wherein the 
Holy Ghost hath placed you bishops, to rule 
the Church of God, which He hath purchased 
with His own blood. ... And now I com- 
mend you to God and to the word of His 
grace. Who is able to build up and give an 
inheritance among all the sanctified’”’.*’ ‘The 
Church of Ephesus was St. Paul’s work. As 


Satter XX, 128, 132. 


ise, THE EXILED KING 


to the Corinthians, so to the Ephesians could 
he say: “In Christ Jesus by the Gospel I 
have begotten you’’.*® Nevertheless, he was 
but an instrument. Greater than he was at 
work. He had begotten, not by himself, but 
in Christ Jesus, who had made him a vessel 
of election to carry His name to Gentile and 
to Jew; * nor by his own power, but by the 
word of the Gospel. The Gospel indeed was 
of Christ. It was in the Apostles by the in- 
spiration of the Holy Ghost, who taught them 
all things, bringing to their minds all the 
Lord had said; giving each in the hour of 
need the word he should utter.°° Paul had 
planted. God had given the increase. Not 
Paul, but the Holy Ghost, Who had estab- 
lished the Ancients its Bishops, was the 
author of the Church of Ephesus; and this, 
not as an autonomous unit, but as an integral 
part of the universal Kingdom of Christ, in 
which the Holy Ghost is the vital principle, 
according to the word of the Apostles: “It 


$8.7 Cor..iv.) ts. 
S9 Acts ix rs: 
90 John xiv, 26; Luke xii, 12. 


AFTER PENTECOST 53 


seems good to the Holy Ghost and to us’’.%? 

This, then, was the Church of the Apostles, 
the Kingdom of Christ the King. He was no 
constitutional ruler, limited and controlled in 
His sovereignty, but monarch absolute. Of 
Him was true, what of every earthly ruler 
is false, and, wherever claimed and admitted, 
a certain source of tyranny. Of no earthly 
authority can it be said that its supreme will 
is the fountain of all law; because over every 
power of this world, however mighty, is God, 
whose minister it is, to whose law, no less than 
the meanest subject, it must submit. But be- 
cause Christ the King is God, beyond His 
Divine Will no higher origin of law can be 
found. “I delivered unto you which I also 
received. So we preach, and so you have be- 
lreved:?.2? 

Yet the King was no longer visible in His 
Kingdom. The Holy Ghost had come to 
animate it, exercising a double function. 
He sanctified the individual directly. He 
enlightened him directly. He inspired him 


91 Acts xv, 28. 


sae OT XV. 3, 11s 


54 THE EXILED KING 


directly, moving his will by grace. But all 
this regarded personal action. What directed 
social action, the law of life and conduct 
declaring what the Christian must believe, 
what he must do, this was no matter 
of personal revelation, but of supernatural 
social law, to be promulgated by those who, 
illuminated by that Spirit of truth, were, 
according to the will of the King, to hold 
His place in the Kingdom. 

Nor was obedience to the law to be slavish, 
the outcome of fear. Christians, as the Chief 
Pastor of the universal flock reminded them, 
were subject to Jesus Christ, the King, ““Whom 
not having seen, you love; in Whom also now, 
though you see Him not, you believe’’.*%* 
“Wherefore, having the loins of your mind 
gitt up, being sober, trust perfectly in the 
grace which is offered you in the revelation 
of Jesus Christ, as children of obedience’’.** 
Slavery, St. Paul tells us, is characteristic of 
the kingdom of satan as free obedience is 
characteristic of the Kingdom of Christ. 


®3y Peter i, 8. 
94 Ibid. 13. 


AFTER PENTECOST 5s 


“God the Father hath delivered us from the 
power of darkness, and translated us into the 
Kingdom of the Son of His love”.®* The 
holy Apostle opposes to the Kingdom of the 
Son the power rather than the kingdom of 
darkness, because the essential note of human 
social organization, willing submission to le- 
gitimate authority, obtaining in its absolute 
perfection in the Kingdom of Christ, could 
have no place in the usurpation of satan. 
This was tyranny. Obedience to it was 
slavery. Wherefore, St. Peter tells his hear- 
ers, that, “called out of darkness into admir- 
able light, they who in times past were not a 
people, are now the people of God’’.*® But 
though obedience be willing, the Gospel is 
essentially a law. Obedience to the lawgiver 
or his representative, is its mark. It knows 
nothing of the liberty proclaimed in the Pro- 
testant Reformation. 

Willing obedience is rational, not mechan- 
ical. It supposes necessarily an intelligent 
knowledge of the superior, who he is; what 


8S’ Colt; 13: 


®6y Peter ii, 9. 


56 THE EXILED KING 


are his rights; what their title, and the rela- 
tion of their exercise to the common good. 
“Tt is the law” on the lips of many a French- 
man implies rather the sense of powerlessness 
against a force intangible, impersonal and 
tyrannical, than a glad acceptance, as eman- 
ating from legitimate authority, of the decrees 
procured by those directing the Third Repub- 
lic. The ready will, on the contrary, connotes 
loyalty, a personal relation of service given 
gladly to a person with whom we are, at least 
morally, in contact. There is no loyalty to 
a pure abstraction. In a well-ordered de- 
mocracy such as ours, the nation is personified, 
as the source of common good. But this in 
the Kingdom of Christ means an identifica- 
tion of the visible Church and its visible head, 
with the invisible King. It means a personal 
knowledge of the invisible King derived from 
the infallible teaching of the visible Church. 
Is Christ Gode Is He man?’ What.) iis 
operations for the salvation of mankind? 
Are there in Him two personalities or one, 
two wills or one, two operations or one? 
These are questions of the highest moment 


AFTER PENTECOST 57 


if Christ is my King and I, His loyal subject. 
They would be barren speculations, were He 
but a vicarious victim for sin, on whom | 
may by an act of faith lay my guilt. Where- 
fore, one of the first principles of the Reform- 
ers was enunciated by Erasmus, that in the 
Christological disputes of the early Church 
began the decay of the Christian spirit, to 
prevail until the Gospel light should be re- 
stored.** For the Catholic those same dis- 
putes were, without question, the vigorous 
warfare between the two kingdoms; their 
settlement, by the solemn condemnation of 
the errors involved, was the triumph of 
Christ’s Kingdom and of loyalty to the King. 

Lastly a kingdom supposes something more 
than the subjection of many to one. A man 
might have a number of brutes under his con- 
trol. He might have herds and herdsmen 
spread through a large extent of territory. 
Horses and dogs might be trained to definite 
functions. He might make rules and regu- 
lations for the good of all. He might even 
enforce his regulations by penalties in case 


%7 Janssen, Hist. German People, Book v, p. 16. 


58 THE EXILED KING 


of men, causing animals by means of whips 
to conform to them. But no one would call 
him a king, except by the most far-fetched 
figure of speech. Even should the subjects 
be human, a wide difference of civilization 
between ruler and people would take away 
the idea of a kingdom. We grant the title of 
King of Ashantee to an Africannegro. Were 
the English to annex his kingdom, the title 
would not go to their Crown. The King of 
England would not be King of Ashantee. 
That kingdom would vanish: the people 
would be merely a dependent tribe or tribes. 

A kingdom supposes close community of 
nature between prince and people. The king- 
dom of satan, therefore, could be no more 
than a tyranny of despotism, since men on 
earth could never become con-natural with the 
fallen angels. That the Kingdom of Christ 
was made most perfect, is evident from this, 
that man was elevated to the height of the su- 
pernatural Humanity of Christ. Hence St. 
Peter told the faithful that in the call to the 
Kingdom they received, “most great and pre- 


AFTER PENTECOST 59 


cious promises, that by these they might be 
made partakers of the Divine Nature.” ** 

This elevation to the supernatural order, 
whereby men become adopted sons of God, 
brethren of Christ, co-heirs with Him of the 
heavenly country, appears again and again in 
the New Testament. It is the substance of 
the Redemption. It is necessary to the ade- 
quate idea of the Kingdom. It brings as its 
logical consequence, the whole sacramental 
system of the Church on earth. This the Re- 
formers, making Christ a mere condition of 
salvation, and interior faith, without real 
regeneration, the instrument of salvation, as 
logically rejected. The Kingdom of Christ 
became for them a mere figment, namely, the 
invisible company of the elect whose number 
is known only to God. We shall see in the 
sequel, how from this error Jesus Christ has 
lost his place in their religious system and is 
forgotten wherever the Reformation pre- 
vailed. 

Of the new-born Christian life Jesus Christ 


veauPeternt, 4. 


60 THE EXILED KING 


was the centre. Around Him clustered all 
its activity as service gathers round the King. 
The Apostles preached the Gospel as ‘“‘ambas- 
sadors of Christ’’;°® and that an ambassador 
implies a king in his kingdom was perhaps 
even better understood then than now. ‘The 
Church they organized in its visible hierarchy 
was the Body of Christ, of which all Christ- 
lans were the members.'°? ‘This was no mere 
allegory. It expressed a reality not less real 
because spiritual.’ Of this Body all are 
necessarily members, not only for their own 
supernatural life; *°? but also because in it 
each has his own special function.'"°* All this 
may not seem to the modern mind very con- 
vincing. That for the first Christians it was 
saturated with the intimate sense of Christ 
the King, is absolutely certain. ‘Today the 
Epistle to the Ephesians is looked on as a 
difficult book. Its language is splendid. 
But this very splendor makes it in some re- 


2.2 COP. Fi, 20, 
HOSTED COR exile 7, 
FOU Tid st.Vii 1S 
Ae Galvin a7. 
103 Rom, xfi, 4-6. 


AFTER PENTECOST 61 


spects unintelligible; wherefore many pass it 
by as mystical. Of course it is mystical in the 
true sense. That is to say it contains beyond 
the ordinary sense of the words, a meaning in- 
spired by the Holy Ghost as the message to 
be conveyed to men, but discernible only by the 
spiritual man. For the modern mind, the 
mystical is something abnormal, at best alle- 
gorical or figurative, usually fantastic, appeal- 
ing to an inner circle of adepts with its esoteric 
message in no way concerning the business of 
the world. Yet the literal sense of the book 
is most important. Its assumed difficulty 
must, therfore, be attributed to the attitude of 
the modern mind, rather than to the matter 
itself. ‘The Ephesians were ordinary people, 
converts from paganism. In writing to them 
St. Paul would not use language they could 
not understand. Indeed, his letter would but 
resume the instructions given them when he 
received them from the kingdom of darkness 
into the Kingdom of Light. Illustrated by 
the doctrine he had given them, his letter was 
intelligible to all. Its content was clearly de- 
fined. ‘The Church on earth is really the 


62 THE EXILED KING 


Kingdom of Christ in which He reigns over 
all who come to Him. It has its visible 
authority in His representatives. It has its 
constitution and laws. It is in the world, not 
of the world. It is supernatural in its origin, 
in its means, in its end. To enter it is to be 
raised to the supernatural order; for “we are 
buried with Christ in baptism, from which we 
are raised with Him a new *creaturey. 7 
becoming in this world “strangers and pil- 
grims’’, that is to say “foreigners, whose true 
country is heaven, where we shall partake of 
the lot: of the saints’ in Jight”.*? \1tsiseam 
enemy of earthly power. It offers profitable 
alliance. But of this the terms are the re- 
nunciation of the prince of this world. This 
the old pagan world refused. This the 
modern paganizing world declines. Christ 
must triumph in the end.’ But till then 
persecution is the lot of the Kingdom of the 
Crucified.” Firm in these supernatural 


104 Rom. vi, 4. 

105 Heb. xi, 13-16; Col. i, 12. 
2009) COV RV Nea, 28: 

107 y Peter iv, 12-14. 


AFTER PENTECOST 63 


principles, the humblest Ephesian understood 
his Apostle. 

What creates difficulty in the matter today, 
is the low idea of Christ introduced by the 
Protestant Reformers. How low that idea is, 
a brief consideration will show. In making 
Jesus Christ no more than the vicarious victim 
of the Father’s anger satisfying for sin, they 
robbed Him of His Royalty. Making the 
whole process of justification to consist in lay- 
ing hold of the merits of Christ by faith, to 
hide under them man’s irremediable corrup- 
tion, which otherwise would be intolerable 
in the pure eyes of God, they made the 
relation between the Redeemer and the re- 
deemed external only. There was in their 
doctrine no room for regeneration, which they, — 
held in horror. There was no place for that 
participation in the divine nature so prominent 
in the apostolic teaching. God was inexor- 
able, demanding of the Victim the last farth- 
ing of the debt of sin. ‘The hard doctrine of 
predestination followed. God had created 
some for eternal damnation to glorify His 


64 THE EXILED KING 


justice, and these could have no part in the 
atonement of Christ. Others He had created 
for salvation, to glorify His mercy, for whom 
was the fullness of redemption, though no 
work of theirs. could please Him. The 
greater their sins, the more God’s mercy 
would be glorified. Consequently, not by 
their sanctity but by their sins, were the elect 
to work out the eternal purposes of God. 
Of such a doctrine, Luther’s formula: “Sin 
vigorously, but believe still more vigorously”, 
was the practical conclusion. 

In this system there was room for neither 
love nor service. That its authors were hard, 
loveless, scorning, beyond the power of words 
to express, the merest suggestion of merit, is 
just what one should expect. But now comes 
what ought to be a real surprise. If it is not, 
this is due to the necessary relation of our 
nature to the True; so that whatever finds its 
last reason in truth, when once it is presented, 
is recognized sufficiently; and thus carries an 
evidence incompatible with surprise. ‘The 
tumult and malice of the Reformers was suc- 
ceeded by Evangelical Christianity in which 


AFTER PENTECOST 6s 


souls innumerable lived and died in good 
faith. Theoretically they held to the theology 
of Luther and Calvin. Practically, what for 
good faith is inevitable, they ignored it. An 
ardent personal love for Jesus Christ filled 
their hearts. They were given to prayer, 
often of a high quality, and to every kind of 
good work; troubling themselves not at all 
over the fundamental doctrines of their sect. 
Jesus Christ was their Saviour. Still more, 
He was their King, reigning in their hearts 
with absolute sway, so that, rooted in charity, 
they knew also the charity of Christ.°° For 
His heavenly Kingdom they longed. Of His 
earthly Kingdom they had some concept. 
They recognized the obligation of service; 
and whatever the tongue might utter, they 
knew in their heart of hearts that service had 
its merit. ‘They were really God’s children. 
Whatever their teachers might say of bap- 
tismal regeneration, they were partakers in 
the divine nature. In a word, from the 
deserts of Lutheranism and Calvinism they 
looked across the centuries ‘“‘to the rock from 


108 Eph, iii, 17~19. 


66 THE EXILED KING 


which they were hewn”;* and so testified 
to the eternal truth of the Kingdom of Christ 
proclaimed by the Apostles and accepted by 
their disciples. 

For the reality of this Kingdom has always 
been its offence. Imperial Rome not only did 
not proscribe the religions of conquered na- 
tions, but even made it a duty to give the 
gods of eacha place amongst its own. To the 
Roman mind there was, if not identity, at 
least a fraternity among the gods of the na- 
tions, and so the emperors hoped to find in the 
pantheon of conciliated gods a guarantee of 
the perpetuity of the empire. Christianity 
alone could not be permitted. It was the foe 
of all idolatry; and the world-wide idolatry 
was bound up with the idea of the empire. 
Each people might worship the divinities of 
its choice. ‘The country-folk might sacrifice 
to the old rustic gods. The dwellers in towns 
and cities might burn incense with lascivious 
rites to the gods and goddesses of the East. 
The princes and senators might follow their 
imperial master, at once sovereign and pontiff, 


109 Jsa. li, 1. 


AFTER PENTECOST 67 


up the Sacred Way to Jupiter on the Capitol. 
But behind all, unifying all, giving life to all, 
was the worship of the genius of the emperor, 
of the genius of Rome; almost hidden because 
so non-liturgical, yet entering everywhere into 
the Roman public life, military, political 
and civil. Within the limits of the empire 
imperial Rome was the supreme object of 
worship. This empire, in the heart of which 
was born the Kingdom of Christ, was for 
nascent Christianity the kingdom of satan, 
which the Kingdom of Christ was to over- 
throw. 

Hence the conviction on the part of the 
pagan world that Christians threatened the 
very existence of the empire. In vain did 
Justin plead, not only that their practices and 
their beliefs were innocuous, but also that they 
had their counterparts in the imperial religion 
itself; that their morals were pure; that their 
doctrine was above reproach; that the accu- 
sation of atheism brought against them, was 
that for which Socrates had suffered. In vain 
he urged that the newness of their doctrines 
could be no cause of persecution; since doc- 


68 THE EXILED KING 


trines both new and corrupt, masquerading 
under the cloak of Christianity, the doctrines 
of Simon Magus, of Helena, of Menander, 
of Marcion, were left in peace. The King- 
dom sought was the Kingdom of Heaven, not 
a realm on earth. Christians adored Christ 
as God. This could have but one conse- 
quence. To seek the Kingdom of Heaven 
was to rebuke the idolatrous earthly empire. 
The worship of, Christ could not coalesce 
with the imperial religion, as could the cor- 
ruptions of Christianity introduced by the 
demons to prop their falling power. It must 
be destroyed, or it would triumph. 

That this and this only was the grievance 
against Christianity we learn also from the 
younger Pliny. He found many Christians in 
his province. In their practice he could see 
nothing wrong. They met on a certain fixed 
night, when they sang a hymn to Christ as — 
God, bound themselves by oath to avoid 
grave sins against their neighbors, and took 
a modest meal in common. Under these 
terms we see with sufficient clearness the mys- 
teries of our holy faith. They maintained 


AFTER PENTECOST 69 


nevertheless what he deemed a perverse 
fanaticism, the persistent refusal to abjure 
Christ and to burn incense to the Emperor’s 
image and to the gods. He therefore held 
that, notwithstanding their innocuous rites, 
their obstinacy deserved whatever punishment 
fell on them; and on the other hand, that 
they could purge themselves by merely curs- 
ing Christ and burning incense. With this 
view the Emperor Trajan agreed.‘ ‘Tacitus 
was of the same mind. Writing of the burn- 
ing of Rome, he tells how Nero, generally 
suspected of having caused it, substituted for 
himself the Christians hated for their atro- 
cious crimes. These he afflicted with new 
and unheard of torments. From informations 
laid by apostates an immense multitude were 
convicted, not so much of incendiarism, as 
of hatred of the human race. This, then, 
was their atrocity. Christians were hated be- 
cause they hated the human race, a term 
which, in the writers of imperial times, meant 
definitely the empire with its subject peoples. 
Hence, he adds, that, though they deserved 


110 Epist. x, 97. 


70 THE EXILED KING 


all the torments inflicted on them, their lot 
excited a certain pity, since it was felt that 
they suffered rather as victims of the Emper- 
or’s ferocity, than as culprits punished for the 
public welfare.*™ 

There can be no question that the fear of 
Christianity was well-founded. The fear 
was not the Emperor’s nor the Senate’s, nor 
that of the Sacerdotal Colleges, nor of the 
Consuls, nor of the tribunals. It was the fear 
seizing on the demons themselves, whose king- 
dom was in the Empire; and they inspired 
it into all, from the highest to the lowest, 
within the Empire’s broad limits. Let us see 
what took place in the worship that Pliny 
calls the singing of a hymn to Christ as God. 
This in itself, could be no offense in the eyes 
of one who was quite willing to hear Her- 
cules, /Esculapius, Bacchus, and many other 
mortals praised as gods. The antagonism 
to any other divinity, was what made the 
worship of Christ appear in his eyes a fanat- 
icism. 

This antagonism was a most earnest reality. 


111 Ann. xv, 44. 


AFTER PENTECOST 71 


We can not know directly what took place in 
the Christian assemblies during the centu- 
ries of persecution. Indirectly the matter is 
quite clear. The allusions in the Acts of the 
Martyrs, in the writings surviving from that 
period, especially in the Apologies of St. 
Justin, are perfectly intelligible to the Chris- 
tian understanding. ‘The very discipline of 
the secret, which cuts us off from that direct 
detailed knowledge we should prize so 
greatly, proves the fact. ‘To the inner mys- 
teries were admitted only the initiated, who 
had been tried and approved. The catechu- 
men stood at the threshold, a seeker. Reason 
confirms, what experience of the many anti- 
christian secret societies teaches today, that 
this very secrecy is the sign of a most com- 
plex organization out of harmony with the 
existing order of things. What the Chris- 
tian organization was, and the nature of its 
antagonism to the pagan civil society of the 
day, we may learn from the liturgies divulged 
after the peace of Constantine, containing 
necessarily the traditions of the earlier age. 

In the first place the liturgy wherever cele- 


es THE EXILED KING 


brated, whether in the Roman catacomb or 
in some secret chamber of an Asian city; 
among Numidian mountains or in an Egyp- 
tian desert; by Gauls or Germans or the 
farthest Celts, how poor soever the surround- 
ings and accessories, was not the action of 
this congregation or that, but of the Catholic 
Church, coextensive with mankind; a social 
act of the highest order, not a private devo- 
tion. As the imperial edicts, the code of the 
empire, united peoples, diverse in character, 
speech, place, under the universal sway of the 
Roman Ceasar, so the liturgy, essentially one, 
united the nations in a similar, but spiritual 
union; and as proconsul, prefect or procura- 
tor spoke to his province, prefectship, or 
government, not in his own person, nor as the 
head of a single element, but in the name of 
him who held supreme authority over the 
whole, so did bishop and priest speak and act 
on behalf of the supreme authority of the 
Universal Church. Thus in the Liturgy of 
St. James of the Syrian Rite, the celebrant 
begins by praying that in the kiss of peace all 
may be united in the bond of peace and char- 


AFTER PENTECOST 72 


ity. But in his exhortation to the people the 
deacon lets them know that there is question 
of a union reaching out far beyond the walls 
of the place of their assembly. He bids them 
adore the living Lamb of God offered upon 
the altar, and thus passes to a comprehensive 
view of the mystery of Christ’s coming, and of 
the Church His spouse, praying that, signed 
with His Cross on earth, it may be raised to 
its place at His right hand in heaven. Fi- 
nally, he tells all that in the Liturgy now be- 
ginning, their father, the celebrant will 
remember all believers in Christ. The cele- 
brant now says appropriate prayers, and pre- 
pares to bring in the sacred elements made 
ready for the sacrifice; whereupon the dea- 
con resumes: ‘Go in peace, glorious priest. 
Let us stand praying with fear and trembling, 
with modesty and holiness, because the ob- 
lation is being brought in and majesty arises, 
etc”. Here the priest is evidently above the 
people exercising ministerially the function 
of Christ Himself. He stands between God 
and man after the Consecration has been ac- 
complished, an intercessor, not for his con- 


74. THE EXILED KING 


gregation only, but chiefly for the whole 
Catholic Church, for Patriarch, and bishops 
and clergy, for all faithful people, for the 
whole Christian Republic, princes and sub- 
jects. NNor afte the -departed’ forgotten 
Martyrs, confessors, apostles, bishops, clergy 
and faithful of every rank have their place 
in this action embracing the entire Kingdom 
OP Tist.cs. 

It is clear, then, that from the earliest 
times the Church was an organized Kingdom. 
Consequently, there was in it a King. ‘This 
King was not the Roman Pontiff, nor any 
Patriarch in his jurisdiction, nor any Bishop 
within his diocese. From the highest down, 
none pretended to be other than the vice- 
gerent of the King. The King was Jesus 
Christ Himself, who was in the midst of His 
people in the one Holy Sacrifice, of which 
Priest and Victim were ever the same, though 
offered on ten thousand altars. Hence the 
deacon cried: ‘Majesty arises. The gates 
of heaven are opened. The Holy Ghost 
descends upon these holy mysteries and falls 

112 Renaudot, Liturg. Orient. Vol. 2. pp. 29 ff. 


AFTER PENTECOST oF 


gently into them.” And so every assembly 
however small, however poor, by the presence 
of the universal King in the adorable Sacri- 
fice was not so much a representation, a type 
of the universal Church; but became so iden- 
tified with it; that each could claim to be the 
Church, none could be more so than another. 
All simultaneously constituted it, united in 
Jesus Christ the bond of all charity. 

In the Liturgy just quoted, which bears the 
name of St. James, the Lord’s brother, the 
priest prays for the whole Christian Repub- 
lic. With the peace of Constantine that Re- 
public had become palpable. This prayer, 
then, must have replaced what was more ap- 
propriate to the years of war when the King- 
dom of Light arrayed against the kingdom of 
darkness was removed from public view. 
What that appropriate prayer was, we may 
gather from one which in the time of peace, 
was reserved to days of penance, the last ech- 
oes of which we hear even today on Good Frri- 
day. We find it in some editions of the Lit- 
urgy of St. Basil: ‘Remove from all the 
earth the worship of idols. Crush satan and 


70 THE EXILED KING 


his evil power; and dash him quickly to the 
ground beneath our feet. Restrain heresies 
and their authors, so that all heretical perver- 
sity hostile to thy Church may be cut away 
and broken off: As before, O Lord, so now 
put them down. ‘Take from heretics those 
clouds of their hearts, and show them clearly 
their wretchedness. Curb their envy, their 
designs, their machinations, their craft, their 
detractions, so that their right hand, which 
they turn against us, may be paralysed. Re- 
press their assemblies, divide their delibera- 
tions, O God, who didst bring nought to the 
counsel of Achitophel’.*** ‘There can be no 
question as to the kingdoms engaged, their 
warfare, their weapons, nor doubt of the as- 
sured triumph of the Kingdom of Christ. 
Finally we have in the martyrs the most 
convincing proof of our assertions. ‘The mere — 
word uttered does not always express the true 
mind: there can be no mistaking the word one 
dies for. ‘The pagan power thought to crush 
the Kingdom of Christ in the blood of its 
members. It brought about instead testi- 


118 Tbid. vol. 1, p. 10. 


AFTER PENTECOST 77 


mony, the most convincing of all, to the ex- 
istence of that Kingdom, to the essential en- 
mity between the two Kingdoms and to the in- 
evitable subversion of the kingdom of satan. 
Reading the Acts of the Martyrs, we are 
struck with the fact that we are looking on a 
combat ad outrance between Christ in His 
champion, and the devil in the material force 
of the Empire. ‘‘Adore the gods’, cries the 
Prefect. The victim reviles them. Scourged, 
racked, he hears again: “Adore the gods”. 
This is all that is asked. Instead the victim 
reviles them more vigorously, and praises 
Jesus Christ, the true God. Crueller tor- 
ments are added; then—‘‘Adore the gods”, 
‘“‘All the gods of the heathen are devils’, is the 
reply, “Leave your blind folly, renounce your 
idolatries and adore with me Jesus Christ, the 
true God”. Miu§racles often followed. Idols 
fell in presence of the martyr. The brazen 
tripod, with the fire in which they would 
make him burn incense, would crumble to 
dust. From the guards and executioners 
themselves some would join the victim, cry- 
ing that they too were Christians, while the 


78 THE EXILED KING 


Prefect would fall from the tribunal stricken 
by an invisible hand. The victim’s death 
would end the scene, and with him would 
perish, baptized in their blood, those whom 
Christ had received to follow His example, 
to give testimony before the powers of this 
world, a good confession.*** But in their 
death they gave life to others who could not 
close their eyes to the convincing argument of 
men and women, boys and girls, bridegrooms 
and brides, parents and children, masters and 
servants, all going gladly to death for the name 
of Christ. ‘The blood of martyrs was the 
seed of Christians”. 

In the next place it is impossible not to note 
the nature of the relations between the martyr 
and Jesus Christ. Christ is the leader, the 
master, the crowner of victory: the martyr is 
His soldier, His servant, looking to Him for 
sustenance in the battle, for the reward when 
the day shall have been won. There is no 
choice for the martyr. If called to conflict, 
he must fight. But though so bound, that 
refusal would be rebellion, he enters the bat- 


494 7) ims v1;) 24, 


AFTER PENTECOST 79 


tle, less with a sense of obligation, than of 
love, so that he counts it joy to suffer and to die 
for Christ. Yet this love is not what we give 
to one we see, and whose love for us we per- 
ceive immediately from the very fact of 
immediately sensible relations. St. Peter 
sums up the matter very clearly: “You shall 
greatly rejoice if now you must be for a little 
time made sorrowful in divers temptations; 
that the trial of your faith (much more pre- 
cious than gold, which is tried by the fire) may 
be found unto praise and glory and honor at 
the appearing of Jesus Christ; Whom not 
having seen, you love, Whom also now, though 
you see Him not, you believe; and believing, 
shall rejoice with joy unspeakable’’.7*® 

The evidence of this sense of the royalty of 
Christ appears continually. Thus the martyr, 
Speratus, urged to conform to the imperial 
will, answered: “TI know not the royalty of 
the world. I have committed no theft. If 
I have carried on business, I have at least 
paid the taxes; for I know Our Lord, the King 
of Kings and the Master of all nations”. And 


80 THE EXILED KING 


his companion, Donatus, subjoined: ‘We 
give Cesar the honor due to Cesar; but we 
fear only God”. Still more striking is the 
example of Sts. John and Paul who in the 
imperial household served Constantia, daugh- 
ter of Constantine the Great. Summoned by 
Julian to apostatize and adore the idols, they 
reminded him how Constantine and his suc- 
cessors held to Jesus Christ, putting off their 
diadems before Him, to acknowledge His 
supreme Kingdom, ‘‘We”, said they, “hold 
with them. You, an apostate, without part in 
Jesus Christ, have no right to their empire”. 
Then, when brought before the judge, who 
offered them the alternative, apostasy or 
death, their answer was brief and to the point: 
“Tf Julian be your lord, stick to him. We 
acknowledge no other than Jesus Christ”. 
The spirit of the martyrs was, then, that 
mysterious love, at first sight a real paradox, 
which is loyalty raised to the supernatural 
order and purified from every natural imper- 
fection. All loyalty is something of a paradox 
at first sight. It is the devotion of one, con- 
scious of his freedom, guarding it against all 


AFTER PENTECOST 81 


invasion, to one in supreme authority. He, 
most probably, has never seen that one; whose 
merits he takes on trust; whose title to service 
is not the fact of benefits conferred. Of these 
loyalty is often unconscious. If they are 
known they are not adverted to in the hour of 
service. The simple fact of supreme author- 
ity is, indeed, enough to arouse it; for loy- 
alty, one of the sweetest and truest of human 
things, comes necessarily from our social na- 
ture. We are in social relations with our fel- 
lows, not for any utility arising from them, nor 
through choice, but because such is our nature. 
And because we can not but love the very con- 
sequences of our nature, our love goes out 
spontaneously to the society of which we form 
a part, to the place of our abode, to the coun- 
try that nourishes us and gives us a home, and 
to him who, whatever name he goes by, 
whether president or king, holds the supreme 
society together by his government of men and 
his administration of their country. This love 
and service is no sacrifice of individuality. 
It is not given despite one’s personality nor at 
the expense of one’s liberty. It is the comple- 


82 THE EXILED KING 


ment of the former, giving an adequate field 
for its development. It is the condition of the 
latter, the liberty of a social being, not the 
lawlessness of that impossible figment of 
imaginations corrupted by malice, a being 
rational, yet unsocial, the individualistic man 
of the social contract. 

But if all loyalty is at first sight something 
of a paradox, that of the martyr must to the 
natural man seem a contradiction. All that 
would make it reasonable in the natural order 
is lacking in the world. The supernatural 
society, the supernatural country, the super- 
natural King, derive all their reality from the 
world tocome. “If our hope in Christ be of 
this life only”, says St. Paul, “‘we are of all 
men the most miserable”. “If I fought with 
beasts in Ephesus, what doth it profit me if 
the dead rise not”? “But now Christ is risen 
from the dead, the first fruits of them that 
sleep”. “Afterwards the end, when He shall 
have delivered up the Kingdom to God and to 
the Father. For He must reign until He hath 
put all His enemies under His feet”.*** The 


ALG COLE XK 1110, 92. 20, 2a es. 


AFTER PENTECOST 83 


devotion of the martyr to Christ was his loy- 
alty to his King. It is a testimony irrefra- 
gable to the fact, that to him Christianity was 
the Kingdom of Christ; the supernatural 
society beginning on earth, perfected in hea- 
ven; at war with evil on earth, where he must 
be faithful to death; triumphant over all evil 
in heaven, where he shall receive the crown 
of life; in which Jesus Christ rules supreme. 
To Christ every human being owes service, 
and love stronger than death, not only as a 
creature and a creature redeemed, but also as 
a creature supernaturalized in his social na- 
ture, thus admitted to the society of the saints 
in light,‘’* and made unto God a Kingdom.*"® 


dh Col. i, X32. 


118 Apoc. v, 10. 


CHAPTER V; 
THE GREAT COUNCILS 


We have noticed already a most important 
consequence of the different concepts of 
Christ, that of the Saviour-King reigning in 
the Kingdom bought with His Blood, the 
Church—the concept that stood alone in 
Christendom until the Reformation, and still 
obtains necessarily, as of faith, in the Catholic 
Church; and that other brought in by the Re- 
formers, which sees in Him only the Victim 
bearing vicariously the chastisement of our 
iniquities, on Whom we have but to lay our 
sins by faith to escape hell and enter heaven. 
We must now recall it. | 

With the concept of a king in his kingdom, 
is joined necessarily the idea of subjection and 
obedience, of loyalty and service to be ren- 
dered generously and gladly even to death. 


This does not demand a close personal knowl- 
84 


THE GREAT COUNCILS 85 


edge of the sovereign, whom the subject may 
have never seen. Indeed, these duties, though 
to be paid personally by each individual, are 
of their nature social, coming, as we have 
pointed out, from our social nature. The same 
subjection and obedience, loyalty and service 
are as much due and are as readily paid to the 
impersonal republic, as to the most absolute 
autocrat. But it does require a knowledge 
of the king’s title, the facts on which it rests 
and the limits if any, of his authority. Ina 
word, the subject must know who his sovereign 
is; and the more perfect this knowledge, the 
more perfect will be the discharge of all duty 
of service. 

On the other hand, should one pay my debt, 
I need know only the fact to enjoy its con- 
sequences to the full. Yesterday I dared not 
appear in public. Whenever the door-bell 
rang, I trembled. ‘Today people come to the 
door, transact their business and depart. I 
do not even hear the bell. I walk the streets 
fearing neither importunate demands, nor 
threats of the law. All this I can have and 
more, without knowing who paid my debt, 


86 THE EXILED KING 


or why he paid it, or how. It is enough that 
the debt is paid, and I am free. | 
This is the sum of the Reformers’ doctrine; 
“Christ bore our sins in His own body on the 
tree”.1'® On the other hand, “You are not 
your own. You are bought with a price’,’*® 
has been to countless devout souls the motive 
of a loving service that had no place in the 
theology of the sect to which ostensibly they 
adhered. Whatever their error in faith may 
have been, their practice has, out of the com- 
pelling power of truth, been uninfluenced by 
it. But the Reformers founding the sect were 
logical. “Christ has paid. We lay our sins 
on Him. This is all. What profit, then, in 
disputes regarding Him, whether He be really 
God or not, whether He be two persons, or 
one. These impede the vigor of our faith, 
inducing hesitation and doubt regarding the © 
sufficiency of the Atonement to respond to my 
act whereby I take hold of it”. From their 
point of view, therefore, Erasmus was right 
in saying, that the long disputes concerning 


119 y Peter ii, 24. 
120; Cor. vi, 19, 20. 


THE GREAT COUNCILS 87 


Christ, which followed the Peace of Constan- 
tine, were the beginning of religious decay. 

For the Christians of the fourth and the fol- 
lowing centuries these questions were crucial. 
“Jesus Christ, St. John tells me, is the Word 
made Flesh. Must I say with the Fathers 
that the Word is of the same substance as the 
Father, God, equal to the Father in all things; 
or I must say with Arius that the Fathers 
erred, that the Word is but the first of crea- 
tures? Is my Redeemer God, or not? This 
is no barren speculation. On it depend the 
title of the King, the nature of His Kingdom, 
the service I owe Him, my place in His mili- 
tant Kingdom, my hope of His triumphant 
Kingdom”. The perception of the Godhead 
of Jesus Christ leading to some sense of His 
Kingship in His Kingdom has lifted, as we 
have seen, many a devout soul out of the nar- 
row sect, towards the pure and free atmosphere 
of the Catholic Faith. The full concept of 
that Godhead armed every true Christian in 
the earlier and better day against the Arian 
perfidy. 

No wonder, then, that Christendom was 


88 THE EXILED KING 


stirred by Arius as never before or since. The 
honor of the King was assailed. His King- 
dom was attacked. The Arians rivalled the 
old pagans in persecuting the Catholic Faith. 
The modern mind may see between Arian and 
Catholic nothing but a battle over words. 
To the men of the time the affair was such 
as to engross the attention of Emperor, Pon- 
tiff, Patriarchs, Bishops; and to hold all the 
Christian people waiting anxiously for what 
they would do. The Ecumenical Council of 
Nicea defined the truth and condemned the 
error. But the Arians would not submit. 
They had the material force of the secular 
power on their side; and for some three quar- 
ters of a century they persecuted and trium- 
phed, so that in the words of St. Jerome the 
whole world groaned, wondering to find itself 
Arianna 

In corrupting faith in the Holy Trinity 
the heretics attacked the imperishable King- 
dom of Christ. Christ is God. Christ is 
King. The two assertions are so inseparable 
as to be almost identical. If He be not King 


121 Dialogue cont. Lucif. rgr. 


THE GREAT COUNCILS 89 


in His own absolute right, He is not God; 
for to deny that Kingship, is to deny its title, | 
founded in this, that He is the Creator and 
Redeemer of allo If, Hebe, not.God, such 
Kingship can not be His. Asa mere creature 
He could reign by a participated authority 
only. But nothing is more certain than 
that Christ in Heaven, through His Vicar 
on earth, reigns supreme over the mili- 
tant Church. It is His spouse, subject to 
Him.*** It is His body, His flesh and His 
bones, of which we are the members; *” 
morally, therefore, identified with Him,’ as 
He Himself told St. Paul lying in the dust 
near Damascus.’*° And in St. John’s vision 
the Asian Churches are His subjects. Their 
bishops are His servants. He places them, 
and threatens to remove them if they fail in 
His service.12® Wherefore, despite its ap- 
pearance of strength, Arianism was doomed 
to disappear. The very episode of Julian the 

122 Eph. v, 24. 

128 Ibid. 29. 

124 Col, i, 16-18. 


125 Acts ix, §. 


90 THE EXILED KING 


Apostate and his revival of paganism proves 
the doubtful hope placed by the devil in the 
eficacy of heresies; while the traditional: 
‘Thou hast conquered, O Galilean” of the 
last pagan emperor, too lightly rejected by a 
friendly modern criticism, showed that, doubt- 
ful as heresies were, in them were the only 
means of attacking the Kingdom of Christ 
left to him, who so lately had seen the whole 
world embraced in his kingdom of darkness. 

Other errors, therefore, were stirred up to 
attack the Catholic doctrine of the Incarna- 
tion, thus to destroy the Kingdom and to 
uncrown the King. Of these the greater 
number were of a nature too subtly theologi- 
cal to be discussed here. Suffice it to say 
that, despite their subtlety, they aroused the 
Christian people, who, learning from their 
prelates the dangers that threatened, wel- 
comed the successive councils which vindi- 
cated the rights of their divine King. Of 
one, however, the hostility to the King and 
His Kingdom will be as obvious to the lay 
mind as that of Arianism. We shall there- 
fore mention it. ‘The Patriarch of Constan- 


THE GREAT COUNCILS 91 


tinople, Nestorius, horrified his people by 
uttering, for the first time, what is now one 
of the common-places of Protestantism, that 
to call the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of 
God, is to make of her a Goddess. The 
audience cried out against such teaching. 
Their Christian sense perceived that to un- 
crown the Mother would be to uncrown the 
Son. If Mary is not the Mother of God, the 
reason can only be that her Son is not God. 
This Nestorius said explicitly. Jesus is not 
the Incarnate Word, the God-Man. He is 
only the organ, the temple of God, the “ani- 
mated purple of the King”, not the King 
Himself. If we worship Him, we do so in 
view of the Godhead dwelling in Him. All 
these conclusions and other equally blasphe- 
mous in the ears of the Christians of the time, 
Nestorius proclaimed. His error is espe- 
cially noteworthy, because it has become the 
staple of modern agnostic Christianity. The 
ignoring of the Virgin Birth, the eagerness 
to admit that “the Lord’s brethren” of the 
Gospel, were children of the Blessed Virgin, 
the willing doubts about the Resurrection, 


92 THE EXILED KING 


so universal today outside the Catholic 
Church, spring from Nestorianism always 
latent in Protestantism. ‘The open profession 
of these errors by men and women claiming 
to be Christians, is Nestorianism open, un- 
ashamed, and carried to its last consequences. 
But the so-called undogmatic Christianity 
cleared of all mysteries, which finds favor 
today, is one thing. The Christianity of the 
fifth century, dogmatic, because substantially 
mysteries the most profound, was another. 
The Council of Ephesus assembled. ‘The 
people waited in eager expectation. When 
word came that Nestorius was condemned and 
the Blessed Virgin Mary’s title of Mother of 
God given such dogmatic value, that to deny 
it would be forever formal heresy, they broke 
out into acclamations; and lighting torches, 
led the Fathers of the Council in triumph to— 
their lodgings. ‘They celebrated the victory 
of the Heavenly King in a way that is now 
used only in the triumphs of worldly power. 
So widely the present differs from the past. 
This warfare, in which Christ the King was 
attacked again and again in the facts of His 


THE GREAT COUNCILS 93 


nature so as to destroy His prerogatives, 
lasted in round numbers for five hundred 
years. Like all diabolical attacks it began in 
deeply laid plans, and, on these proving unsuc- 
cessful, ended in irrational violence. Of such 
assaults Our Lord’s temptation in the desert 
isthe type. It began craftily. What greater 
obligation lay on the Son of God beginning 
His work among men, than to preserve His 
physical lifer “If, therefore, thou be the Son 
of God, command these stones to become 
bread.” The temptation was rejected; and 
the fact that it was an evil suggestion, proved 
from Scripture. Immediately a still more 
cunning temptation followed. Prove your 
mission by a stupendous miracle, and at the 
same time give occasion for the fulfilment in 
yourself of a notable Messianic prophecy. 
“Cast thyself down from the pinnacle of the 
temple. God has given His angels charge 
over thee, and in their hands they will bear 
thee up”.*** But all the devil’s craft avails 
nothing. Fury takes its place. “Fall down 
and adore me. [I don’t pretend to justify such 


pat Pe XC, 3%. 


94 THE EXILED KING 


a deed. J know it would be the supreme act 
of rebellion. Become a rebel as I am, and I 
will reward you with all the kingdoms of the 
world”.’*8 No traitor from the clergy or the 
hierarchy led the last onslaught, turning his 
theological lore against his Sovereign. It 
was too crude, too utterly contrary to all tradi- 
tion, for any one, imbued in the least degree 
with the Christian doctrine, to meddle with. 
The universal laity was horrified at it. A 
rude soldier who had made his way to impe- 
rial power, Leo, the Isaurian, became the 
devil’s instrument in the maddest of all mad 
projects, to overthrow Christ’s Kingdom, by 
destroying the images of the King. ‘This was 
the Iconoclastic persecution. 

The Holy Pontiff, Pius X., told us with all 
the weight of apostolic authority, that Mod- 
ernism, condemned by him, is the compen- 
dium of all heresies. Of that Modernism, as 
all know, Protestantism was the germ. In it, 
therefore, we find them all renewed, one by 
this leader, another by that; one in this sect, 


128 Matt. iv, 3-9. 


THE GREAT COUNCILS 95 


another in that. But some permeate all Pro- 
testantism; and of these a very notable one 
is the hatred of holy images. The proc- 
lamation of the new doctrines was always 
accompanied with the wrecking of the old 
churches. That the use of images and pic- 
tures is a violation of the divine command- 
ment is obviously absurd; yet it seems to have 
acquired axiomatic status among Protestants. 
It is supposed to be self-evident. No attempt 
is made to prove it. That, from the Martyr 
Church of the Catacombs through all the 
centuries, whether of warfare or of peace, 
down to the Reformation, the veneration of 
holy pictures and images was an integral part 
of Christian worship; that it was vindicated 
triumphantly in the persecution we are con- 
sidering; that it flourishes vigorously today in 
the one Christian society which retains in all 
its solid completeness the faith collapsing in 
every Protestant denomination; all this goes 
for nothing. Hence it is difficult for those 
outside the Catholic Church, to realize the 
horror with which the Emperor’s blasphe- 


96 THE EXILED KING 


mous edict forbidding the use of images and 
requiring their removal from the churches, 
filled the Christian world. 

The persecution began early in the eighth 
century and continued with varying intensity 
to nearly the middle of the ninth. After some 
hundred and twenty years of warfare, the 
Catholic doctrine came out triumphant; for 
here, as in every other case, the attack pro- 
duced the solid justification. Not only was 
the fact of the use of images maintained, but 
its nature was defined accurately, and the 
reasons supporting it explained with scientific 
clearness. It is true that human weakness 
was not absent. Frailty yielded to force what 
neither scripture, nor tradition, nor the- 
ological doctrine could permit. Constantine 
Copronymus, the son of Leo, assembled by 
his own authority three hundred and thirty-. 
eight bishops, who, submitting to his violence, 
declared the veneration of images, idolatrous. 
But such a declaration so obtained is value- 
less from every point of view. It carried 
no conviction with it. It influenced none. 
Whatever the Emperor gained, he gained by 


THE GREAT COUNCILS 7 


force for the moment only. The Seventh 
General Council settled the matter by its 
definitions; and though the secular power was 
slow to yield, it did so eventually. The 
victory was with the Kingdom of Christ. 

In this long war of five centuries, several 
things demand attention. Of these the first is 
the immortal vitality of Christ’s Kingdom. 
It is indeed an everlasting power,’”? a King- 
dom of all ages.**° What would be longevity 
in an earthly Kingdom, measures but an epi- 
sode in the life of the Church. One may ob- 
ject that history gives us many examples of 
monarchies long-lived, France, England, the 
Holy Roman Empire, The Eastern Empire, 
and in pagan lands, Egypt and China. But 
we must observe in Christian nations, that 
their durability is often but apparent. The 
name remains, the outward form; the inward 
reality changes continually. Whatever dura- 
bility they once had was the result of their 
intimate connection with the Kingdom of 
Christ. This bond once weakened, decay set 


129 Dan. vii, 14. 
130 Ps, cxliv, 13. 


98 THE EXILED KING 


in; while the purely secular kingdoms and 
empires set up, either in independence of the 
Kingdom of Christ, or in opposition to it, 
have been unable to continue. Such were the 
Empire of Napoleon, The Second Empire, 
The Russian Empire, The German Empire 
of 1871, the Prussian Kingdom. As for the 
pagan kingdoms, we know from the records 
that, though they remained, so far as territory 
and people were concerned, the same, the gov- 
ernment itself was a series of revolutions, in 
which one dynasty succeeded another after in- 
tervals sufficiently brief. And this is what we 
are obliged to expect. Only God is eternal. 
His Kingdom, therefore, is alone everlasting. 
Relative durability on earth can be had only 
by a participation in the durability of that 
Kingdom. 

We must also consider those who were en- 
gaged in the contest. ‘They were, in general, 
the sovereigns, the Roman Pontiffs, the hier- 
archy with the clergy, and the people. The 
sovereigns were more inclined to the side of | 
error. Even when they supported the truth, 
they did so with but half a heart. They were 


THE GREAT COUNCILS 99 


eager to play an important part, and too often 
exaggerated its importance. Hence flattery 
would win them over to the wrong side; so 
that without perceiving what they were doing, 
they gave some countenance to the heretics. 
This was the case with even such as Constan- 
tine and Justinian. From the hierarchy and 
the clergy came the heresies with the excep- 
tion of one, Iconoclasm; and amongst the 
bishops and clergy too many, who could not 
have thought of originating a heresy, were 
but too ready to follow others less scrupulous. 
Their fear of the civil power led them to 
subservience, so that at its bidding they would 
even attempt to celebrate councils for the rat- 
ification of error. Indeed they were strong 
only when united to St. Peter, in his succes- 
ors, whose function is by divine appointment 
to confirm his brethren in the faith;'** so that 
to him even the bravest and most orthodox, 
as Athanasius and Cyril, turned for support. 
They were valiant, they were faithful and 
true; but Peter in his successors was the firm 
rock of the faith. So the King had decreed 


181 Luke xxii, 31, 32. 


100 THE EXILED KING 


in making him Vicar in the Kingdom on 
earth; and what the King established, history 
verifies. The Pontiffs were men, encompassed 
with human weakness. They could and did 
make mistakes, for Christ had not promised 
them a superhuman prudence. This the 
Church did not need. The gift of infalli- 
bility, whereby in exercising his office of 
Supreme Teacher of the universal Church the 
Roman Pontiff is preserved from error, suf- 
fices to maintain the faith in all its purity. 
For centuries acute minds have been working 
on personal errors of judgment, and these not 
clearly established, to make out a case against 
the glorious privilege of Peter, the sure pro- 
tection of our faith; and have not succeeded. 
The history of the five hundred years of 
heresies is the demonstration of Papal Infal- 
libility. 

Lastly, the people. The Church can not 
err. Hence both elements that compose it 
must be infallible: the Roman Pontiff, Vicar 
of Christ, Head of the Church on earth, and 
as such the Universal Teacher of mankind in 
all that appertains to the spiritual order; and 


THE GREAT COUNCILS 101 


the faithful people, united among themselves 
in subjection to the supreme authority of the 
mioly See: 4 Hachis infallible... The Pope, 
actively so; the faithful people,—infallible 
passively. The Pope cannot in his capacity 
of Universal Doctor, teach error; the people, 
as the universal flock of Christ, can not accept 
error. And nothing is more evident in the 
history of the five centuries, than the Catholic 
sense, which, untrained in theology, never- 
theless detects error spontaneously. ‘These 
two great guides are with us today, our pro- 
tection against the errors of the time, the 
Infallible Pope and the Catholic conscience. 

The world was changing greatly during the 
five hundred years. The Western Empire 
crumbled under barbarian incursions, sur- 
viving the transfer of the imperial throne to 
Constantinople by barely a century and a half. 
The Eastern Empire, resting on the prestige 
of the Roman name, lost the Roman vigor 
from which that prestige sprang. In the 
meantime the Roman Pontiffs were growing 
daily in political and social influence. In 
converting the northern nations, they were 


102 THE EXILED KING 


building upon the foundations of the free 
institutions of the Barbarians a Christian 
civilization, alien altogether to the Roman 
civilization founded in paganism and never 
freed from the idolatrous taint. Thus the 
Kingdom of Christ was growing, developing 
and consolidating, to be the moving principle 
and animating spirit of Christendom. This 
shall now occupy our attention. 


CHAPTER VI 
CONSOLIDATION OF THE KINGDOM 


Many imagine that the idea of the Church 
as a Kingdom is a novelty, something super- 
added to the simplicity of apostolic times by 
human arrogance. From all we have said 
this theory is clearly false. Christ certainly 
founded His Church as a Kingdom, preached 
it as a Kingdom, organized it as a Kingdom. 
His Apostles so understood the fact and rec- 
ognized St. Peter as Our Lord’s Vicar in the 
Kingdom. The error originates in this, that 
people do not understand how the administra- 
tion of a kingdom must differ according to 
differences of circumstances, though its consti- 
tution remains ever the same. Evidently 
when the Pontiffs were in the catacombs they 
could not rule the Church in the way they 
would use when persecution should have given 


place to dominion; nor as long as communica- 
103 


104 THE EXILED KING 


tions with distant places remained difficult 
and slow, could they exercise throughout the 
world that supervision which is in vogue to- 
day. On the other hand the Church in dif- 
ferent places was organized locally by the 
Apostles in a system of Bishops, Metropol1- 
tans, Patriarchs. But being all of one mind 
among themselves,**? and with their Lord and 
Master, Jesus Christ,’** these local Churches, 
Provinces, Patriarchates, were but parts of the 
one Kingdom on earth over which Christ had 
appointed St. Peter to rule in His place. For 
the same reason, St. Peter approved and tacitly 
confirmed all that was appointed in the way 
of local administration. Indeed we shall not 
err in concluding from the unity of method 
found everywhere, that the mode of organ- 
izing the early Church according to the con- 
ditions of the times, had been indicated by Our. 
Lord during the forty days after the Resur- 
rection wherein He instructed the Apostles 
in things pertaining to the Kingdom of God.*** 
132 Acts iv, 32. 


188; ‘Thess, ii, 14; Philip. ii, 17. 
134 Acts i, 3. 


CONSOLIDATION 105 


Certainly they must have gone on their mis- 
sions with a definite plan agreed upon by all. 

That Peter during all the times of perse- 
cution, during all the centuries of the here- 
siarchs, ruled the Church in his successors is 
clear. Notwithstanding the apparent inde- 
pendence of the Patriarchs, and through them 
of the provinces and dioceses, the Roman 
Pontiff had but to speak, to be heard through- 
out the world. As we have seen, it was he 
who spoke the last word in defining truth and 
condemning error. To him the Patriarchs 
themselves recurred, not only for light and 
guidance, but also for plenary authority, as 
did St. Cyril in the Council of Ephesus against 
Nestorianism; while every attempt to act in 
matters ecumenical independently of the Holy 
See resulted in confusion and error, not in the 
order and certainty of truth. 

Every heresy results, not in impairing the 
unity and solidity of the Kingdom, since such 
unity is a divine effect not to be frustrated by 
human agency, but in separating subjects from 
the Kingdom. Though Nestorianism was 
condemned, some in Asia clung to its errors; 


106 THE EXILED KING 


and to this day Nestorianism prevails in many 
places. ‘The same is true of the Monophysite 
heresy with regard to the Egyptian Copts. 
Such separated bodies were, of course, rebels 
against the authority of the Vicar of Christ. 
But that was rather a consequence of their 
error. ‘This, in itself, was a disorderly ad- 
hesion to the person of the heresiarch, and 
thus to the false doctrine he taught; so that 
with him they cut themselves off from Catho- 
lic unity, and went out from the Kingdom. 
Such is and always was the Catholic doctrine. 
But the moment came to attempt to divide the 
Church, to attack the very constitution of the 
Kingdom in the person of the Vicegerent of 
the King. | 

From the founding of Constantinople, the 
new Rome, its bishops had been a perpetual 
source of disorder. During five centuries 
twenty-one of the fifty-eight occupants of the 
See had been heretics or suspected of heresy. 
One great heresy after another came from 
Constantinople, or was received and fostered 
there. If it be asked, how this came about, 
the answer is obvious. Ambition was the 


CONSOLIDATION 107 


cause, and such an ambition as could not but 
lead to the gravest errors. The Bishops of 
Constantinople were jealous of the Roman 
Pontiff. Forgetting that his ofice was of 
divine institution; that its exercise demanded 
supernatural privileges which God alone 
could give; which, having been given to St. 
Peter alone, could be communicated to no 
other, they persuaded themselves that the 
Primacy, as a matter of fact united to the Ro- 
man See, was derived from this fact. In a 
word, they assumed that the successor of St. 
Peter was Head of the Church, Vicar in 
Christ’s Kingdom, because he was Bishop in 
the city which was the seat of a temporal em- 
pire pretending to be world-wide and eternal. 
Barely fifty years had elapsed since the trans- 
fer of the imperial administration to the new 
city, when the Second General Council held in 
Constantinople was induced to decree to the 
Bishop of New Rome the second rank in the 
Ghurch, * In, the Council of Chalcedon the 
Bishop of Constantinople procured a further 
decree granting his See equal privileges with 
those of Old Rome. The Sovereign Pontiff 


108 THE EXILED KING 


disallowed the usurpation. But the annul- 
ling of the ambitious decree did not take 
away the ambition. The fable of Phaeton 
became a reality. The child would assume 
to his ruin the functions of his father. 

At length the attack was launched. Pho- 
tius, having usurped the See of Constantino- 
ple, was condemned by the Roman Pontiff, 
who ordered the restitution of the lawful 
Patriarch. Photius replied by excommuni- 
cating the Pope, declaring him a heretic. 
This was to assert his independence; since 
it was the denial of the prerogative of Peter. 
His triumph was short-lived. He was exiled; 
his principles remained. A century and a 
half later Michael Cerularius succeeded 
where Photius failed, and the Eastern Church 
fell from Catholic unity. Separated from the 
life-giving authority of Christ’s Kingdom its. 
strength was consumed, its organism atro- 
phied. It existed, and still exists, in a sort 
of living death, preserved by the King for the 
good of innocent generations, and, without 
doubt for the happier day of its return to the 
Shepherd of the whole flock of Christ. 


CONSOLIDATION 109 


But while all this was preparing, the su- 
preme King had not forgotten His promise: 
“T am with you all days, even to the con- 
summation of the world’”’.*** In the thought 
of the enemy, the scission of East and West 
was to be the ruin of Christ’s Kingdom, 
against which he had been unable hitherto to 
prevail either by force or by fraud. Christ, 
who in His supreme providence draws good 
out of evil for His own, was overruling the 
malice of demons, the wickedness of men, to 

the glory of his Kingdom. 

_ The Empire after Constantine was Christ- 
ian in this sense, that prince and people were 
Christian, as a rule sincerely so, sometimes 
attaining even in the imperial palace to high 
sanctity. But the political system was un- 
changed from that of the pagan emperors. 
Justinian built the noble church dedicated to 
Divine Wisdom. He cordially agreed with 
his predecessor Gratian, who rejected the ti- 
tle of Pontifex Maximus, which Augustus, 
in order to concentrate all power in the em- 
perors, had made an imperial function. 


185 Matt. xxviii, 20. 


1IO THE EXILED KING 


Nevertheless his famous code of imperial law 
was Saturated, not with Christian wisdom, but 
with the autocracy of pagan Rome. In 
things spiritual, as in things temporal, he con- 
ceived the emperor supreme. ‘This was one 
of the chief reasons why Constantinople was 
so prolific of heresy. In defending orthodoxy 
the emperor must needs be directed by the 
Vicar of the heavenly King. To act inde- 
pendently of him in matters spiritual, was to 
act in opposition to him. It was, in a word, 
to promote heresy and schism. 

Emperors and Patriarchs might dream of 
thus destroying the power of the Pope. ‘They 
might be willing to divide the Kingdom in 
order to avoid the authority of its earthly 
Head. Christ from Heaven would turn their 
devices to its consolidation. “Even now”, 
said St. John, as the first century closed, 
“there are become many Antichrists. They 
went out from us, but they were not of.us”.1*° 
By going out they carried with them their 
errors, not to the detriment, but to the welfare 
of the Kingdom. What was true of them was 


136 John ii, 18. 


CONSOLIDATION IIl 


true of Photius, Michael and their abettors. 
Those had attempted to divide Christ Him- 
self. These would divide His Kingdom, His 
Body. They went out, because they would 
not have in the Kingdom their place and part 
according to the Constitution of Christ, and 
with them they took all those political notions 
which for centuries had been the bane of 
Christianity, the cast-off rags of the kingdom 
of satan. Not by their counsel, but by the 
will of God,'** what they had planned for 
ruin was to be the very upbuilding of Jeru- 
salem. Where they looked for destruction, 
behold, there was renovation. What they 
thought would be weakness and corruption, 
God turned to strength and purification. 
Sion put on her garments of beauty, loosing 
the bonds from her neck.*** Christianized 
pagan society is now to be replaced with 
Christendom. 

During the centuries that followed the 
transfer of the imperial throne to Constan- 
tinople Europe had undergone great changes. 


187 Genes. xlv, 8. 


188 Isa, lii, 1, 2. 


I12 THE EXILED KING 


The northern Barbarians had invaded the 
Empire. Roman Gaul had become the seat 
of Frank and Burgundian Kingdoms. ‘The 
Saxons had made themselves masters of Ro- 
man Britain. The Lombards were in North- 
ern Italy, the Visigoths, in Roman Spain. 
These had come into the Peninsula Christians, 
having become such during their temporary 
sojourn in Masia and Thrace, the Balkan 
- States of today. But under the influence of 
Constantinople, they had accepted Arianism, 
and from this no little trouble was to arise. 
The others, coming as pagans, had been con- 
verted by missionaries sent from Rome; to 
whom also the tribes beyond the Rhine, in the 
regions between the Weser, the Elbe and the 
Vistula, gave at length an attentive ear. All 
did not respond with equal readiness to the 
gospel. ‘The actual invaders were converted 
and civilized more easily than those to whom 
the Gospel was preached outside the limits of 
the old empire. But whether within or with- 
out those limits, all came under Christian 
influences, not as formed nations, but as tribes, 
with the natural free social organization 


CONSOLIDATION 113 


characteristic of the tribe, untainted with that 
despotism of princes and slavishness in peo- 
ples, which was the universal condition of 
the nations arising during the supremacy of 
the kingdom of satan. They offered, there- 
fore, suitable matter for the organization of 
the Christian state; of which the members, 
members also, and first of all, of the Kingdom 
of Christ, should be free with the freedom 
with which Christ had made men free.** 
This notable fact was the foundation on which 
was built Christendom. 

Among these new peoples, the German 
tribes held the chief place. Those invading 
Britain, as well as their fellows who remained 
behind on the seaboard between Holland and 
Denmark, the tribes along the Weser and the 
Elbe and the Main, were of German stock, no 
less than the Franks of Belgian Gaul and the 
Rhine. Moreover their position in Europe 
was central. ‘heir territory, whether as 
transalpine provinces or as land adjacent to 
these, had been most intimately connected 
with Rome, and this intimacy was retained 


138 Gal. iv, 31. 


(I14 THE EXILED KING 


now that imperial Rome through the apathy 
of the Eastern Empire was becoming Rome 
of the Popes. 

From time to time news reached Constanti- 
nople of what was doing in Western Europe. 
As the fifth century was closing, it was re- 
ported that Clovis, the Frankish king, had 
received the faith. The fact no doubt awak- 
ened a passing interest, such as that with which 
good Christians today hear of an achievement 
more than ordinary in the mission-field. 
Some two hundred and fifty years passed dur- 
ing which, so far as the East was concerned, 
the Frank kingdoms grew unnoticed, until 
the gossip of a day told how one Pepin had 
united them all under his sceptre; and, as the 
arbiter of the West, was showing himself at 
once the obedient son and valiant protector 
of the Kingdom of Christ, and of its earthly 
Head. The enemies of the Pontiffs were his 
enemies. He confirmed by authentic deed 
laid upon the tomb of St. Peter the possession 
of the temporal state that by the process of 
centuries had come naturally into the hands of 
the Bishop of Rome. This the Eastern world 


CONSOLIDATION 116 


learned without understanding the meaning of 
it. Forty years afterwards came news of 
which the gravity could not be ignored. The 
Roman Pontiff had repaid a hundred-fold 
the filial service of Pepin, proclaiming his 
son Charles, Emperor of the Romans, thus 
restoring the Western Empire. 

It is said commonly that St. Leo III. re- 
vived the Empire which had ceased with 
Romulus Augustulus in 476. So it was in 
name and in dignity. Its seat was in Italy, 
which saw the beginnings of Roman power. 
It drew name and honor from Rome, the 
centre of the Empire. Its territory was vir- 
tually that conquered by Julius Cesar, the 
founder of the Empire, and by his worthy 
successors. But in a deeper, truer sense the 
Empire of Charlemagne was a new creation. 
Not without reason was the prefix, Holy, set. 
The Holy Roman Empire was more than 
power over men, and protection for the 
Church. For three hundred years a society 
absolutely Christian founded on the free in- 
stitutions of the Barbarian invaders had been 
maturing under the fostering care of Christ’s 


116 THE EXILED KING 


Vicar. Of this the Holy Roman Empire was 
the perfect fruit, the visible expression of 
Christ’s Kingdom in the temporal order. It 
was Christendom. 


CHAPTER VII 
CHRISTENDOM 


The two Empires were side by side. Both 
were Christian in this sense, that the members 
of each were individually Christians. But 
the social spirit animating each was not the 
same. The whole theory of the elder, falling 
into decay, was a derivative of pagan society. 
That of the younger, vigorous and fresh, was 
purely Christian. 

The term Christendom has more meanings 
than one. It has been used loosely to signify 
as a unit the part of the world which Christ- 
ians inhabit, as opposed to heathendom—in- 
habited by the heathen. As such designations 
are drawn from what is held to be socially 
excellent or the reverse, the use of the term 
implied that Christianity is, at least, a most 
precious possession, the lack of it, a grievous 


privation. For this reason, as well as for 
117 


118 THE EXILED KING 


others that will appear, the word has virtually 
dropped out of our modern vocabulary; since 
to distinguish a region by the Christianity of 
its inhabitants is to assert implicitly that there 
Christianity is something definite, a real 
power; that from it come the social principles 
which govern men in their relations with one 
another. 

In a stricter sense Christendom means the 
domain of Christianity. It therefore brings 
in necessarily the Kingdom of Christ actually 
functioning throughout its territories. These 
may be divided into different civil states; but 
every such state finds itself and its members 
in touch with Christ’s Kingdom superior in 
its own sphere to every temporal power. ‘The 
rights, the laws, the prerogatives of that King- 
dom must be recognized. Moreover this rec- 
ognition is not to be that given by an 
independent, equal society, acknowledging the 
rights of another, while asserting its own 
rights calling for the same respect. In 
Christendom the society, the state, is Christ- 
ian. Its members are Christian, not as in- 
dividuals only, but socially also. Hence the 


CHRISTENDOM 119 


Church is an integral estate in each realm. 
Its rights pertain to the national integrity, 
and as such are intangible. Its law is part 
of the law of the land. ‘To vindicate the law 
it has its own means; but it can call on the 
civil power to enforce its judgments. This 
was the condition of Christian states, such as 
France, England, Scandinavia, which never 
came into the Holy Roman Empire. 

Lastly Christendom should mean the union 
of all Christian states under one temporal 
head, governed in all its interior relations by 
principles and laws essentially Christian, di- 
rected to the more perfect functioning of 
Christianity, to the spread of the Faith 
through all the world. It should mean, in 
brief, the complete organization of Christ’s 
Kingdom, not in the spiritual order only, but 
also in the temporal, since both are essential 
to mortal men and to their mutual relations 
in this world. 

In it there would be the two authorities, 
side by side; Christ’s immediate representa- 
tive, His Vicar upon earth, with powers ex- 
tending beyond the bounds of time and space 


120 THE EXILED KING 


to heaven itself,*° supreme, as the spiritual 
order must be supreme; the Emperor, Christ’s 
Lieutenant in the temporal order, whom 
all Christian princes should reverence and 
obey.‘*? In this Christendom pontifical au- 
thority and imperial, would not be two, but 
one, complementing, not rivalling each other. 
One authority from one divine source, reach- 
ing through different but coordinate relations, 
to different but coordinated terms; which 
blend into one, the universal good, the term of 
all social action, as the authority, diverse in its 
function, is one in its source. Christendom 
so organized would be the perennial exhibi- 
tion of the two great commandments of 
charity, that of the love of God, and that of 
the love of our neighbor. For these are not 
two distinct precepts, but one expressing the 
obligation in the creature to love the Creator. 
Yet because the Creator may be reached in 
love directly in Himself, and indirectly 
through His creatures whom He loves, the 
law is twofold in its expression, corresponding 


140 Matt. xvi, 18, 19. 
141 Rom. xiii, 4; 1 Peter, ii, 13. 


CHRISTENDOM 121 


to these two relations. Not otherwise in sub- 
jection to the Vicar of Christ would such a 
Christendom exhibit immediate service of 
God in the spiritual order; in subjection to 
the Emperor the same service would be 
shown, but mediate through the temporal 
order. 

This was the Christendom designed by St. 
Leo III. This was the Christendom accepted 
by Charlemagne. This was the Christendom 
corrupted and destroyed by the malice of his 
successors. What it would have accom- 
plished, had human frailty permitted it to 
develop to its perfection, we cannot conceive. 
It was no human contrivance. It was part 
of God’s providence for mankind, inspired 
by Him with a real will for its success; but 
like all the means employed by God for our 
salvation, conditioned on its acceptance by 
man, who was free to reject it. From it we 
may draw the answer to be made to those 
who, against the Catholic doctrine of Christ’s 
Kingdom, of its universality reaching out to 
all nations, of its mission to the whole world, 
object the apparent disproportion between the 


122 THE EXILED KING 


design and its results. Hardly, they tell us, 
was the Empire established to be the instru- 
ment of the upbuilding of Christ’s Kingdom, 
than the preparation for the Iron Age began, 
that calamitous tenth century, the scandal of 
the Papacy and of the Church. All know 
that the so-called history of that time contains 
much exaggeration. ‘Those most devoted to 
the Kingdom of Christ admit scandals, many 
and grave. ‘They do so cheerfully; for they 
recognize their origin. The serious student 
of history does not fail to recognize at certain 
periods of the world a very special diabolical 
activity. The signs are too clear to be mis- 
interpreted. But never was the evidence 
clearer of the direct warfare of the perpetual 
enemy against the Kingdom of Christ, than 
during the period of ‘Tusculan and Crescen- 
tian domination in Rome. We therefore see 
in it, not the failure of the Kingdom, not even 
its weakening, but the clear demonstration of 
its immortal strength. Only the power of 
Christ could meet such evils and survive. 
Moreover this too must be noticed. What- 
ever happened in Rome, had no effect on the 


CHRISTENDOM 123 


faith of Christendom. Whatever his personal 
defects might be, the Sovereign Pontiff was 
the Vicar of Christ, to whom the Christian 
looked with reverence. Nor did scandal 
quench the supernatural life. The tenth 
century saw the rise of Cluny. It was the age 
of St. Henry and St. Stephen; of the spread of 
religion in Germany and of the conversion 
of Hungary. It witnessed the christianizing 
of the faithful Normans. Even in Rome it- 
self it prepared for the great work of reform 
the immortal St. Gregory VII. 

Nevertheless we may say, that through the 
fault of man, the whole supernatural order 
from the beginning, appears at first sight— 
we may say it without irreverence—a sort of 
patchwork. God has in nothing demon- 
strated His wisdom more clearly, than in the 
constant drawing of good out of evil, that 
makes up the chief course of His providence. 
Had Adam not sinned, what would have been 
the results for men? Had the Jews not re- 
jected Christ; had they received the preaching 
of the Apostles; had the emperors after Con- 
stantine given themselves with simplicity to 


124. THE EXILED KING 


the Kingdom of Christ; had the schism never 
been planned and consummated ; had the suc- 
cessors of Charlemagne been faithful to the 
mission he accepted; had the Crusades been 
carried out in the pious spirit that conceived 
them; had Francis I. united his power with 
the Emperor’s to stop the Protestant revolt in 
its beginning; had the Catholic and schis- 
matic sovereigns, instead of uniting against 
Pius IX. to impede the Vatican Council, 
joined with him to promote it; the history of 
Christ’s Kingdom would have been far differ- 
ent, and the world at large would have been 
far happier. But at each of these great crises 
the failure of man frustrated the merciful de- 
signs of God. Had the Kingdom not been di- 
vinely immortal, it would long ago have per- 
ished; for no merely human institution could 
have survived such shocks, nor even a single 
one of them. We compare the Church to a 
ship holding its course, beset with rocks and 
shoals, through a succession of tempests. The 
figure is no commonplace, such as is applied 
to an ordinary state. It contains no hyperbole. 
It is a plain and most apt illustration of an 


CHRISTENDOM 125 


unexaggerated fact. Only the divine Hand 
could have guided it during the past. Only 
the divine Wisdom is equal to the emergencies 
of the future. It is no little thing to see in 
this the demonstration of the divine origin, 
of the supernatural character of the Catholic 
Church; to admire and adore the King ever- 
present to govern His Kingdom, not, as do the 
wisest of earthly monarchs, by foreseeing 
perils and avoiding them, but by meeting the 
perils foreseen, and from them drawing a 
renewed security for the present, a renewed 
vigor for the future. Nevertheless, all our 
faith in divine Wisdom and Power, all our 
conformity to the wonders of Providence, do 
not forbid a sigh over what we may be al- 
lowed to call the original plan of the King- 
dom, over what at every crisis it might have 
become but for human blindness: they rather 
justify our pious regret. 

This has been a digression. Let us return 
to our subject. Christendom is, as we have 
seen, the extent of human society permeated 
with, dominated and actuated by Christian 
principles. Comparing it with pagan society, 


126 THE EXILED KING 


we notice in the latter a defect of organization. 
We see absolute authority wielded by the des- 
pot for his own ends, and the subject people 
to be disposed of according to his pleasure, 
which is for them the inexorable law. One 
may object that this seems an exaggeration. 
The Roman Empire was a model of organiza- 
tion. In the first place we answer that the 
Roman Empire was unique. Christian phil- 
osophy of history has always recognized its 
special place in divine providence. ‘Take the 
other great empires, and notice that they were 
but temporary extrinsic aggregations of con- 
quered nations, from which tribute and ser- 
vice were to be obtained. For this, satraps, 
governors were sent out by the sovereign, who, 
if they collected revenue for him, were eager 
to enrich themselves. From such oppression 
the Roman Empire was not exempt. Again, 
that the will of the prince is the source of 
law was from the birth of the Empire a Ro- 
man maxim. It is enshrined in the Justinian 
Code, and the Eastern Empire clung to it to 
the end. Yet we admit that among all the 
pagan empires the Roman stood alone. It 


CHRISTENDOM 127 


had an organization found in no other. But 
it was exclusively the organization of author- 
ity making its hold upon the subject people 
firmer and more lasting. It was not the or- 
ganization of society as a whole. 

The intimate organization by which minor 
societies were compacted together in the 
supreme society, in an orderly subordination 
of the less to the greater, until from the in- 
dividual the sovereign was reached, exhibits 
what, to the modern mind, seems an intricacy 
of manors, manorial courts, parochial organi- 
zation, feudal organization, of the organiza- 
tion of the hundred and the county, of civic 
organization in guilds, trades, boroughs, cities, 
with their charters and privileges and tra- 
ditional rights, all leading up to the supreme 
authority, royal in the King, ecclesiastical in 
Primate, Legate and Supreme Pontiff. Yet 
it made for liberty, as the pagan lack of or- 
ganization made for tyranny. It had its root 
in the free tribal customs of the barbarian 
invaders which were nothing else than pri- 
mary applications of the natural law. But 
the supernatural activity of the Kingdom of 


128 THE EXILED KING 


Christ, taking to itself the invaders, purified 
and perfected their customs, till from the wild 
root arose the stately tree, the Christian state 
of the ages of faith. 

For the state in the ages of faith was in- 
ternally, essentially Christian, not merely 
so denominated, because its members were 
Christian. As the pagan state was in its 
tyranny, its lawlessness, its injustice, its loose- 
ness of cohesion, the kingdom of satan, es- 
sential disorder, corrupting the social rela- 
tions of mankind; so the Christian state with 
its safeguards against tyranny, its law, its 
justice, its compactness of organization, was 
the Kingdom of Christ, essential order, per- 
fecting social relations and with a perfection 
no unaided human intelligence could have 
designed, no unaided human effort could have 
attained. ‘[his may seem incredible to those 
who have the popular notions of what modern 
arrogance calls the dark ages. We cannot 
delay to go into a formal apology for Christ- 
lan society as it existed in the ages of faith. 
The subject is worthy of study under a com- 
petent guide; and we merely say that those 


CHRISTENDOM 129 


who undertake the study seriously will find 
that from the Reformation no period has been 
more grossly calumniated by those who knew 
the truth, none more completely misunder- 
stood by those who innocently accept as history 
the mendacious exaggerations and deliberate 
misrepresentations of a relentless hostility. 
Of the essential difference between the old 
order and the new, drawn from their intimate 
relations, of the former with the kingdom of 
satan, of the latter with the Kingdom of 
Christ, the evidence is clear. Pagan social re- 
lations were bound up with idolatry. Never- 
theless this added no dignity to them. Sov- 
ereigns would pretend to be of the race of 
some god to elevate themselves, to ensure their 
dynasty; not to give dignity to the state of 
which they were the chiefs. Christian social 
relations were elevated by their bond with 
the Kingdom of Christ. Anciently, only in 
Israel were Kings anointed and crowned by 
the higher spiritual power, because Israel 
alone knew the true God, alone understood 
that the people were the people of God, and 
that to rule them as such, the king had his 


130 THE EXILED KING 


authority from God. “He chose His servant 
David, and took him from the flocks of sheep 
to feed Jacob His servant and Israel His in- 
heritance’’.**?, The solemnity of the act may 
be learned from the detailed account of the 
anointing and crowning of Solomon.*** But 
once the Kingdom of Christ was established ; 
once its relation to all human society began 
to be understood; once men grasped the con- 
sequent dignity of the least in civil society, 
coming from his membership in the Kingdom 
of Christ where all are kings, and kings are 
subjects; “where there is neither Gentile nor 
Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Bar- 
barian nor Scythian, bond nor free, but Christ 
is all and in all’’;*** the idea of the king put 
by God to rule His people revived. Even 
into the Eastern Empire, notwithstanding its 
taint of pagan social principles, the practice 
of consecration and coronation made its way 
gradually. It appeared also here and there 
in Western Europe. But with the inaugura- 


142 Ps, Ixxvii, 70, 71. 
143 3 Kings i, 38-40. 
144 Co]. iii, rz. 


CHRISTENDOM 131 


tion of the real Christian state in the person 
of Charlemagne the coronation and anointing 
became so essential, not only in the Empire 
but in every great kingdom, that until it had 
taken place, the king was not conceived to 
have the fullness of his dignity and authority. 
On the other hand, once conferred, it made 
his title indefeasible. 

So St. Jeanne d’Arc was commissioned from 
heaven to bring the Dauphin to his corona- 
tion in Rheims, without which there could 
be no resisting the English invasion. So too 
against the House of York, alleging the initial 
defect of the Lancastrian title, Henry VI 
urged his own, his father’s and his grand- 
father’s coronation, and the oaths of fealty en- 
tailed thereby. 

Thus consecrated the king became by a 
special promise, made and received, the pro- 
tector of Christ’s Kingdom. As such he built 
and endowed churches and monasteries for 
the divine service. The doing so was not 
always the result of personal piety. St. Henry 
was not the only emperor, nor St. Louis and 
St. Stephen the only continental sovereigns 


132 THE EXILED KING 


remembered for their religious foundations. 
Henry I. and Henry II. were as active in 
England as St. Edward and Henry VI. That 
Christ the King should receive by day and 
night his constant service of praise; that in 
the Holy Mass should be renewed on ten 
thousand altars the Sacrifice of Calvary, that. 
king, noble, knight, burgher, yeoman, peasant, 
should take the opportunity to kneel before 
Him, doing homage as a liegeman to his lord; 
that in the Holy Sacrament Christ should 
dwell among His people, sanctifying the land 
with His presence; these were ideas not so 
much expressive of personal piety, as bound 
up with the national life. They may seem 
strange to some, so foreign are they to modern 
notions. But we must remember that the 
modern idea is but four hundred years old, 
an episode, let us hope, in the long history — 
of the Kingdom of Christ. That of the ages 
of faith was the logical perfection of the un- 
broken Christian tradition of fifteen centuries. 
How far the world has departed from this 
authentic Christianity, a single example will 
declare. There was then no sovereign how- 


CHRISTENDOM 133 


ever powerful, however wicked in his private 
life and public conduct, who did not fear the 
last chastisement in the hands of Christ’s Vi- 
car, the interdict, by which all divine offices, 
all public administration of the sacraments 
were suspended, excepting only those neces- 
sary for the dying. Ever since Luther’s re- 
volt against Christ the King we see the tables 
turned. Many have been and are still busy 
in trying to bring about a perpetual interdict 
on the part of the civil power against the 
Church, so as to make impossible the exer- 
cise of the ministry instituted by Christ and 
imposed by Him as a perpetual obligation. 
Since the Revolution of the eighteenth cen- 
tury the movement becomes daily more pow- 
erful and more universal. 

In the courts of justice, ecclesiastical law 
had its place and its rights. Sovereigns and 
judges did not always like it. The long 
contest over the investitures, the difficulties of 
Plantagenet Kings with the Archbishops of 
Canterbury, the struggle in France over 
regalia, are in the eyes of the modern historian 
nothing but conclusive evidence of ecclesias- 


134 THE EXILED KING 


tical arrogance, of usurpation encroaching 
upon the essential rights of the civil power. 
The fact was just the contrary. The Church, 
as the Kingdom of Christ, had its definite 
place in the body politic; and the civil power 
was anxious to circumscribe it within nar- 
rower limits. As the Kingdom of Christ, 
it was of a higher order than any civil power, 
royal or imperial. This the universal Christ- 
ian conscience recognized. It happened, no 
doubt, through human frailty, that those who 
held the spiritual power were sometimes in- 
temperate in its exercise. But whatever fault 
there was, did not appear among ecclesiastics 
only. We hear today continually of arrogant 
churchmen, the implication being that the 
temporal sovereigns were like lambs. ‘There 
were also violent and aggressive emperors and 
kings; far more in number, and the less ex- 
cusable, since, whatever accidental grievances 
they might have had, they were as regards 
the main issue essentially in the wrong. The 
churchman, on the contrary, however he 
abused his power, was essentially in the right. 

But this must never be lost sight of. What- 


CHRISTENDOM 135 


ever the frailty of men, and their consequent 
faults and errors, they never forgot that they 
were in Christendom; that Christ reigned 
among them as King, even in their temporal 
realms; that the Church with its hierarchy, its 
churches, monasteries, confraternities, shrines, 
pilgrimages, was part and parcel of their 
life, political as well as personal; that they 
were servants of Christ, to serve whom was 
to reign. 


CHART ERY Vitt 
THE SOCIAL LIFE OF CHRISTENDOM 


The reconstruction of the social life of a 
by-gone age, is a favorite task of modern re- 
search. From excavations, bas-reliefs, pic- 
tures, household utensils, are conjectured the 
manners and customs of those who lived in 
the excavated dwellings, who carved the bas- 
reliefs, who painted the pictures, who were 
reproduced by sculptor or painter, who used 
the utensils. ‘The conjectures are sufficiently 
correct; more so, no doubt, than will be those 
of a future age regarding the world of today. 
We may presume that the men and women 
of a time long past, were more natural, more 
direct; that their uses of things were more 
obvious. Nevertheless one may doubt very 
legitimately whether all the restorations and 


reconstructions are strictly objective; whether 
136 


THE SOCIAL LIFE 137 


sufficient things remain to be put together in 
relations unmistakable; or whether much be 
not due to preconceived notions, which the 
remains are made to serve. One meets, for 
example, in Du Chaillu’s Viking Age a tre- 
construction of Scandinavian social life. It 
is very interesting until the author’s animus 
against the old chroniclers appears. ‘These 
are assumed to be prejudiced, because Christ- 
ian. If they were monks, as was usually the 
case, they are supposed to view everything 
from the narrow standpoint of the monas- 
tery. Monks would surely hold that visitors, 
putting churches to profane uses, were clearly 
marauders. ‘Thus, according to our recon- 
structor, the noble Northmen were calumni- 
ated. The universality of direct testimony, 
the agreement of documents, the prayers for 
deliverance from their fury, are not allowed 
to stand against a theory derived from kitchen- 
middens, the remains of a couple of ships, 
some remains of weapons, of armor, of tools, 
of woven stuffs, of ornaments. Even the 
authority of their own sagas is minimized. 
It is a pity that such investigators do not take 


138 THE EXILED KING 


a glance at things actually existing. If sea- 
going craft, tools, carving, ornaments, woven 
fabrics can prove anything, the Haidahs, who 
may be called the Northmen of the northwest 
coast of America, should have been the mild- 
est, the most cultured of tribes. As a fact, 
living men have personal knowledge of them 
as the cruelest, fiercest of freebooters, given 
to human sacrifices as were the old Scandina- 
vians, and even guilty of cannibalism in their 
rites. ‘The writer remembers from his child- 
hood, what it was to lie in bed and tremble, 
even in the town of Victoria, as the Haidahs 
came down the coast. 

When the reconstruction of the ages of faith 
is undertaken by such historians, there is 
question of more than a personal opinion to 
be expressed, or of a theory to be supported. 
An ingrained prejudice, the justification of 
modern materialism, dominates the investi- 
gator. Even Catholics are affected by it. 
For the ordinary man and woman ignorant 
of the vigor supernatural life can use in even 
the material business of human society, the 
ages of faith were dark ages, ages of 1gnorance 


THE SOCIAL LIFE 139 


and superstition, of social degradation, of 
poverty, of tyranny on the part of nobles, of 
slavery in the people, of unblushing priest- 
craft and blind credulity. The medieval 
romance, once so popular, was built upon 
these notions, and a medieval society was in- 
vented that pleased the modern reader, re- 
warded the author and publisher, but would 
never have been recognized as the world in 
which he had lived, by any man of the middle 
age, could he have been brought back to hear 
if. 

To give an account of the secular order 
during the ages of faith, of the culture, learn- 
ing, harmony of class with class, popular 
freedom, wealth, not concentrated but well 
distributed, of the comfort in the family life 
of even laborers, is outside the scope of this 
book. Moreover, others have done the work 
so well, that to do it over again would be 
invidious. Such popular writers as Cobbett, 
Maitland, Janssen, Green, Walsh are access- 
ible to all. We shall confine ourselves to the 
place held among the people by the Kingdom 
of Christ; to their idea of service permeating 


140 THE EXILED KING 


their whole lives, on which the absurd ac- 
cusation of superstition is founded. 

Let us begin with the Sign of the Cross, 
now an object of horror to the hundreds of 
millions who should be Christians. Tertul- 
lian tells us that in his day Christians began 
every action with it; and everything indicates 
that the practice was not lost in the ages of 
faith. Indeed it could not have been lost. 
It is the outward sign of the subject of Christ 
in His Kingdom. This idea the Protestant 
Episcopalian denomination retains, though 
vaguely; its idea corresponding to its very 
imperfect concept of the Kingdom of Christ. 
In its baptismal rite the minister is directed 
to sign the infant with the sign of the Cross 
in receiving it into the congregation of Christ’s 
flock, as a token that hereafter it will fight 
bravely against sin, and be a faithful soldier 
and servant of Christ to its life’s end. Here, 
of course, is the usual jumbling of terms char- 
acteristic of Episcopalianism; the mixing of a 
radical Protestantism—in this case Zwinglian 
—with tatters of Catholic practice. Yet im- 
perfect as is the expression, the use of the sign 


THE SOCIAL LIFE 141 


of the Cross stirs the puritanic mind to fury, 
because of its necessary implication of a visi- 
ble Kingdom of Christ on earth. Yet this 
Kingdom is a certain factif God betrue. “If 
I be lifted up (on the Cross) said our Lord, I 
shall draw all things to myself’’.**° “In this 
Sign of the Holy Cross conquer” was the word 
to Constantine. He accepted it, knowing that 
it meant the subjection of Cesar’s empire to 
the Kingdom of Christ. ‘The Cross is the 
standard of the King. It proclaims to the 
world the fulfilment of David’s prophecy 
“God has reigned from the wood’”.*** So 
sings the Church in Holy Week.**’ 

Since such is the sign of the Cross, and all 
Christians belong to Christ’s Kingdom, it was 
seen everywhere in Christendom, Christ’s 
Kingdom here on earth. It was on the king’s 
crown, and on the knight’s breast. The very 
sword-hilt was a cross. It not only rose em- 
inent above the church, and dominated the 
altars within, but by the roadside also and in 


145 John xii, 32. 
146 Ps, xcv, 10. An old reading received by St. Augustine. 
147 Hymn. Vexilla Regis. 


142 THE EXILED KING 


the market place it proclaimed the universal 
dominion of the King. It was the first thing 
taught the Christian child. With it all rose 
from sleep, and lay down to rest. It began 
and ended every prayer. There was no 
benediction without it. It accompanied the 
blessing of the parent who signed the child 
with the Holy Cross, as well as that of bishop 
and pastor, whether given in the public pomp 
of ceremonial worship, or in the privacy of the 
confessional, or in the ordinary greetings of 
social life. Before eating or drinking Christ- 
ians signed themselves with the Cross. On 
beginning a journey or any other business, 
they consecrated it to the King with His holy - 
sign. So Henry of Hereford, in challenging 
the crown he had compelled his cousin to 
abdicate, whatever his conscience was in the 
matter, dared not seize it like one of the ~ 
heathen—hardly could he have attained it 
thus—but claimed it as a Christian, a subject 
of Christ, making a solemn sign of the Cross. 
Could one of that strange time return to earth 
today he would need nothing beyond the 
world’s carelessness of the Cross to be sure that 


THE SOCIAL LIFE 143 


Christendom was perishing, and heathendom 
returning to usurp its place. 

It is remarkable that during those times 
there was no little legislation regarding con- 
fession, the work allowed on holy days, and 
Holy Communion; while of legislation re- 
garding the obligation of hearing Mass hardly 
atraceistobe found. Some see in the former 
fact a sign of tepidity. No doubt there is 
much to be urged from that point of view, 
especially as tepidity in practice is not incon- 
sistent with a very strong faith. Nevertheless 
this must be always remembered, that Holy 
Communion is the food of the soul, and 
its use depends, not indeed exclusively, yet in 
great measure, upon the need of souls. In 
times of persecution daily Communion was 
often morally necessary for the faithful; and 
so they carried home with them, Sacred Hosts, 
which had been consecrated during the Mass 
they were able to hear, perhaps, at irregular 
intervals. Frequent, even daily Communion 
is recommended earnestly today, not because 
of our fervor and our strength, but because our 
charity grows cold. It is necessary to mark 


144 THE EXILED KING 


off the Kingdom of Christ from the kingdom 
of the world in revolt against the Kingdom of 
Christ. The Christian must stand firmly by 
the one against the other, in thorough loyalty 
to the King. But in the ages of faith no such 
dangers or difficulties existed. People lived 
in the atmosphere of faith. The Kingdom 
of Christ and Christ reigning in the midst of 
it, was so real to them, that at the sound of 
the sacring bell they turned into the church 
to pay their homage with bended knees and 
outstretched hands, as spontaneously as they 
bared the head to their temporal lord as he 
passed them in the way. When they met the 
King carried to the sick, they could not 
but turn and follow. In the triumphal pro- 
cession of Corpus Christi, when He made 
His royal progress through the land, they 
marched in their confraternities and guilds © 
with banners displayed, or knelt in the way as 
He passed, to receive His blessing. ‘Their 
trade guilds were part of the body politic. 
But they were also in the Kingdom of Christ. 
They had their officers who governed them 
according to the laws of the trade. But there 


THE SOCIAL LIFE 145 


was a higher law to which associated trades- 
men were subject of necessity; and so on the 
great festival of the trade’s patron saint, 
on that of the particular patron of the guild, 
the officers, robed according to each one’s de- 
gree, would lead the members in solemn state 
to pay service to the supreme King in the 
church, not unfrequently their own, built by 
them and maintained splendidly at their cost. 

As for the monastic life, it was and still is 
an integral element in the social organization 
of Christ’s Kingdom. If we consider the old 
pagan religion, we find its principal function 
the propitiating of the gods. It was necessary 
to keep the favor of those who might become 
hostile: it was still more necessary to win back 
those who were beginning to show themselves 
unfavorable. To gain those who were the 
special protectors of another nation could 
hardly be expected. Nevertheless, with such 
a nation overcome, its national gods could 
be conquered; and then the proper thing 
would be to soothe their wounded feelings, 
by associating them with the victor gods as 
divinities of the empire extended by the con- 


146 THE EXILED KING 


quest of their worshippers. From the very 
nature of the false gods this was the obvious 
nature of their religion. ‘All the gods of the 
gentiles are devils’,'** malicious, able, because 
of their power obtained through man’s fall, 
to dispose things according to their worship- 
pers’ desire, yet more ready to harm than to 
benefit, and governed always by the first prin- 
ciple of diabolic activity, to injure the Creator 
in His creature, by drawing man, and with 
him the irrational creation, from the service 
of God. 

But besides this, there was on man’s part 
a very particular reason for the propitiatory 
nature of all religion before the coming of 
the Redeemer and the establishing of His 
Kingdom. We find, indeed, the chief func- 
tion of the Jewish worship to have been the 
propitiation of an offended God. You are 
my people. Nevertheless should the blood 
of the paschal lamb be not upon your door- 
posts, that will avail you nothing. Your first- 
born, equally with the firstborn of your 


148 Pe. xcv, §3 CV, 37. 


THE SOCIAL LIFE 147 


9 


neighbor the Egyptian will die.**® You are 
my people. I give you the meat you crave. 
But while it is yet between your teeth my an- 
ger will fall upon you, and your chief men 
shall perish in thousands by the plague.’*° 
You are my people. I will bring back to you 
the Ark of my Covenant from Philistia in 
signs and wonders. But because in your joy 
you will look into it, seventy of your princes 
and fifty thousand of the people shall die un- 
der my hand.*** Nay more. You are my 
people. You will go down to Gabaa with joy 
to bring my Ark from the house of Abinadab, 
where it has remained for years since that 
slaughter, and David my servant shall lead the 
way with all manner of music. Yet in the 
midst of your gladness Oza shall drop dead, 
because he will touch the sacred thing to steady 
it in its danger of falling.’ But why multi- 
ply examples? The whole law of Sinai speaks 
satisfaction for sin, propitiation of an offended 


449 Exod. Xil,, 7, 12, 13- 
150 Num. xi, 18-20, 30-33. 
151, Kings vi, 19. 

1522 Kings vi, 6-8. 


148 THE EXILED KING 


God; not only by the offender, but on occa- 
sion by even the children of his children’s 
children “I am the Lord thy God, mighty, 
jealous, visiting the iniquity of the fathers 
upon the children unto the third and fourth 
generation of them that hate me’’.*°? 

The world had to be maintained in the con- 
tinual remembrance of what could be so easily 
forgotten, that it was dead utterly in the sin 
of Adam, and was not to be restored to life 
but by the propitiation of the future Re- 
deemer. Hence the numerous propitiations 
of the law, inefficacious in themselves even for 
a satisfaction, legal only and ceremonial; of 
value only as typical of the perfect propiti- 
ation and the interior restoration to come. 
This true sense of constant propitiation idola- 
try had perverted into a worship thirsting for 
blood, ignorant of pure mercy. The words 
of the God of Israel added to those just 
quoted: “And showing mercy unto thou- 
sands, to them that love me and keep my com- 
mandments,”’ give an element of the Mosaic 
law as essential as that of propitiation, consti- 


183 Exod. xx, 5. 


THE SOCIAL LIFE 149 


tuting the full difference between the worship 
of the true God and the worship of devils. 
The notion of propitiation, found in all re- 
ligions, came from the universal fall of man 
in the sin of Adam. The certain guarantee 
of reconciliation, distinguishing the true faith 
of Israel from the false worship of the nations, 
came from the promise of the Redeemer pre- 
served in its purity by God’s people, not 
utterly lost among idolaters, however much 
the usurping demons strove to blot out its 
memory. The worship of Israel, therefore, 
may be summed up as the hope of the future 
amidst the present darkness; the testimony to 
Christ’s Kingdom yet to come against the 
kingdom of satan enslaving mankind. As St. 
Paul explains so beautifully in the Epistle to 
the Romans, and that to the Hebrews, it was 
but typical of future realities, “the shadow,” 
so he puts it to the Colossians, “of the things 
to come”. *** Hence, as the propitiation re- 
mained unaccomplished until the Redeemer 
hung lifeless on Calvary, a propitiation antic- 
ipated, but not yet actuated; decreed by God, 


a04' Cols any 17. 


150 THE EXILED KING 


therefore really efficacious, but not yet exe- 
cuted on earth; foreseen by all the prophets, 
not yet existing among men, the looking for it 
in sacrifice and oblation was the chief ministry 
of the priesthood of Aaron. 

Once what was perfect had come, what was 
imperfect passed away.’°> Was then, the per- 
fect consummation to be the vanishing of the 
visible Kingdom of God with the overthrow 
of satan’s visible usurpation? In a visible 
world inhabited by men in necessary visible 
relations with one another, was every relation 
with God to be without outward sign? Were 
men to use God’s world in common without 
any common social bond ordaining that use, 
and the worship of the common benefactor of 
all? Was the natural Kingdom of Creation 
to remain, and the supernatural Kingdom of 
Grace to be unknown? Was the visible 
Kingdom of the Redeemer to be reckoned an 
imperfectionr Was the more perfect day in 
which God was to be worshipped in spirit and 
in truth,’®® to see amongst His visible creatures 


155y Cor. xiii, ro. 
186 John iv, 24. 


THE SOCIAL LIFE 161 


no sign of His royalty? God is a spirit, and 
therefore He must be worshipped in no slav- 
ish subjection to the letter of the Mosaic law. 
Well and good. What was necessary in the 
dark time, when the whole earth served idols 
and God was adored only in the nation of His 
choice; when, as we have said, and as St. Paul 
told the Athenians, gentile worship was made 
to consist in a superstitious endeavor to pro- 
pitiate with temple and altar powers, even 
unknown, that otherwise might prove hos- 
tile,*°” was no longer called for when His 
name had become great among the nations 
from the rising to the setting sun..°** But 
from this to the substitution of the single idea 
of vicarious atonement for the visible society 
of God’s people, is a step long and unwar- 
ranted. Kingdom was to follow kingdom; 
the true to replace the false; the Kingdom of 
Christ, to be established on the ruins of the 
kingdom of the devil. “When a strong man 
armed keepeth his court, those things are in 
peace which he possesseth. But if a stronger 


157 Acts xvii, 22 ff. 
158 Malach. i, rr. 


152 THE EXILED KING 


than he come upon him and overcome him, 
he will take away all his armor wherein he 
trusted and will distribute his spoils.” *°® 
Notice, he will not destroy, but distribute in 
a purer and nobler court. But why labor in 
demonstrating what experience has estab- 
lished? The theory of the invisible spiritual 
Church, unknown until the Reformation, was 
then put on trial. Its result is now evident, 
the loss of Christ. 

There must be, then, the Kingdon of Christ 
visible, tangible, with its organization, its 
authority, its law. All Christians are sub- 
jects of the King in His Kingdom. They owe 
Him visible, exterior service. Not only the 
interior will, but in obedience to it the ex- 
terior faculties must pay the homage of the 
redeemed creature to the Creator and Re- 
deemer. What that service should be, we 
must now enquire, and how the monastic mere 
enters into it. 

“God, who made the world and all things 
therein, He, being Lord of heaven and earth, 
dwelleth not in temples made with hands; 


159 Luke xi, 2%, 22, 


THE SOCIAL LIFE 153 


neither is He served with men’s hands, as 
though He needed anything, seeing it is He 
who giveth to all life and breath and all 
things’.*®° Here St. Paul puts before the 
Athenians the essential elements of the false 
pagan worship. In the first place they had no 
idea of God the Creator. Their gods were 
all creatures, the offspring by generation of 
others. Even Zeus himself, the father of so 
many gods and demigods, was, with Poseidon 
and Hera and Hades, begotten by Chronos, 
the son of Uranus, divinities vaster, less hu- 
man, less defined, indicating a lost revelation 
of the Supreme Creator, but in the popular 
mind diabolical in their deeds and manners, 
indicating no less surely the corruption of the 
Fall and the devilish origins of pagan wor- 
ship. As creatures, the later Olympian di- 
vinities had their dwellings on earth. To the 
idolater, the image was possessed by the god, 
the temple was his real dwelling. Horace 
asked : 


“Quid dedicatum poscit Apollinem 
Vatesr”’ 461 
160 Acts xvii, 24, 25. 
Voikho Pip oo abe ® 


154. THE EXILED KING 


“What does the poet ask of (the idol) 
Apollo on the day of its consecration ?” 


not by any metonymy, but in the strictest 
literalness of the words. And in the same 
literal sense Virgil makes Carthage Juno’s 
favorite seat, preferred even to the great tem- 
ple in Samos, her fabled birthplace: 


‘Hic illius arma, 
Plic.currus! fuits, * 


“Here her arms, here was her chariot”’ 


While Venus held the same relation to Pa- 
phos: 


‘‘Ipsa Paphum sublimis abit, sedesque revisit 
Laeta suas.”’ 1° 
‘She departs high in air for Paphos, and returns 
happy to her abode (i.e. temple) 


Macaulay, who, perhaps, grasped the pagan 
spirit better than the Christian, represents 
Castor and Pollux answering Aulus Pos- 
thumius: 


162 Aenid, i, 16. 
468 Ibid, 415. 


THE SOCIAL LIFE 155 


“By many names men call us; 

In many lands we dwell. 

Well Samothracia knows us, 
Cyrene knows us well. 

Our house is gay Tarentum 
Is hung each morn with flowers; 

High o’er the masts of Syracuse 
Our marble portal towers; 

But by the proud Eurotas 
Is our dear native home.” 1% 


Lastly to gratify their passions, or to show 
their inborn hostility, or merely to exert their 
power the false gods compel the sacrifice even 
of what is dearest to men. So the shade of 
Achilles demanded Polyxena’s life with He- 
cuba powerless to save her. So Diana re- 
quired from Agamemnon the blood of Iphi- 
genia. If, as some pretend, she spared the 
victim, it was only for a more horrid fate, to 
make her priestess of the Tauric temple; her 
function, to immolate all strangers coming to 
the land. So too Fortune exacted from Poly- 
crates his signet-ring as the price of continued 


164 Lays, Regillus, xxxiv. 


156 THE EXILED KING 


prosperity, and then, rejecting it, brought him 
to ruin. The classic page is filled with such 
stories revealing the true character of the ob- 
jects of pagan idolatry. ‘All the gods of the 
nation are devils’.*®*° 

Against this false worship St. Paul pro- 
claimed the nature of the service to be given 
to Christ the King. The Psalmist sums it up 
tersely and beautifully: “I have said to the 
Lord, Thou art my God, for Thou hast no 
need of my goods’.*®* Our service is deter- 
mined by our relation of creatures redeemed. 
Brought out of nothing into being, from dark- 
ness to light, we must confess openly these 
essential ties to the Incarnate Word. We 
must adore. Again, we must show a fitting 
sense of the goodness and mercy of which we 
are the objects. We must graise. We must, 
moreover, spread abroad our praise, that all 
may hear from us, and that we may hear from 
all, “the mercies of the Lord and His won- 
derful works to the children of men”.1” 


165 Ps, xcv, 5. 
166 Ps, xv, 2. 
167 Ps, evi, 8. 


THE SOCIAL LIFE 157 


We must glorify. Moreover, this is not 
merely a private obligation. It is a social 
one. It is the essential function of the King- 
dom of Christ triumphant in heaven. It 
must be the essential function of the Kingdom 
militant on earth; for, though separated by 
space and time, the two are but one universal 
Kingdom of Christ. The perfect service of 
heaven will show us what Christ has insti- 
tuted on earth. Let us grant a moment to its 
contemplation. 

St. John gives us a glimpse of it. He sees 
in vision the throne of the Lamb, and round 
the throne the four living creatures and the 
four and twenty ancients; and enclosing them 
the great ring of thousands of thousands of 
angels, and beyond these all other creatures in 
heaven, on earth, under the earth, and in the 
sea. [he living creatures and the ancienis 
had golden harps and offered in golden vials 
the sweet odors of the prayers of the saints. 
They began the hymn of praise to the Lamb 
who in His blood had established them in 
His Kingdom. As they fell on their faces 
the circle of angels took up the strain, and 


158 THE EXILED KING 


from these it passed to all other creatures, 
who, each in his place in heaven, on earth, 
in the sea, sang in brief compendium the song 
coming from those round about the throne, 
“To Him that sitteth on the throne and to the 
Lamb benediction, and honor, and glory and 
power, forever and ever’’.** 

It is unnecessary to explain the many opin- 
ions of commentators upon the details of this 
vision. All agree that it exhibits the supreme 
worship paid Our Lord Jesus Christ in His 
Kingdom. All agree that the four living 
creatures are the four Evangelists chosen by 
Christ to transmit to men the word of life. 
All agree in general that the four-and-twenty 
ancients represent the hierarchy, whether ce- 
lestial, or terrestrial, or both; namely, what 
on earth is terrestrial, clothed in heaven with 
the celestial form. In any case they have 
what is analogous to authority, standing be- 
tween the Lamb supreme, and the multitude 
no man can number redeemed by His blood. 
It is their function to lead the everlasting 
hymn of praise which they receive from the 


168 Apoc. v, 6-14. 


THE SOCIAL LIFE 159 


voices proceeding amid lightnings and thun- 
ders from the throne.**® The angels of the 
outer circle represent the multitude of in- 
ferior sacred ministers specially consecrated 
to their ministry, to whom the hierarchy com- 
municate the form of service, which they 
themselves have received; and lastly in heaven 
on earth, by land and sea, there is the multi- 
tude, lay men and lay women sharing accord- 
ing to their own place and degree and manner 
in the ampler and more persistent service of 
the ministers of the Church. 

Here, then, we have the reason of the 
monastic life held in such honor during the 
ages of faith. It is an essential corollary of 
the Kingdom, of which the chief social func- 
tion is the worship of the King. ‘This worship 
is twofold; the continual offering of the sacri- 
fice of propitiation and the service of perpetual 
praise. In heaven Christ reigns the Lamb, 
as it were slain, that is, the Victim of Calvary, 
who entering within the veil with His Own 
atoning blood, both victim and priest *’° not 


169 Apoc. iv, 5. 
470 Heb, ix, rr, 12. 


160 THE EXILED KING 


only created His Kingdom by its power, but 
also recreated those over whom He should 
reign. On earth too Christ reigns in His 
‘Kingdom, the Lamb, as it were, slain; for 
its central action is the Holy Sacrifice of 
the Mass. Here Christ Himself, the High 
Priest, who entering Heaven united in Him- 
self once for all the function of both priest and 
victim, now places Himself in that sacrificial 
state on every altar, at once the Sacrifice of 
Propitiation for our sins, and the King to re- 
ceive our adoration. He is on every altar 
throughout the world: the service of adora- 
tion must be world-wide. It must be social 
not merely personal. Christendom must wor- 
ship, not merely Christians. It must be per- 
petual. Imitating, as far as human frailty 
could, the unceasing worship of heaven,’ it 
became a service, called by a name than which 
no sweeter could be devised, the Laus Peren- 
nis, the Praise recurring with the Rolling 
Years; and like that heavenly service, it re- 
ceived from the King through His representa- 
tives on earth its set form, the marvellous 


171 Apoc. iv, 8. 


THE SOCIAL LIFE 161 


liturgical worship of the Divine Office. And 
so, through all the ages of faith from cathe- 
dral, and minster, and collegiate church, and 
from the humbler convents of men and women, 
scattered abundantly over all the land, went 
up to Christ the King, by day and night, the 
official, social worship of His Kingdom. 
No sound was sweeter in the Christian ear, 
than that which, blending with the bustle of 
the day, or dividing the stillness of the night, 
proclaimed that the business par excellence 
of man was being carried on in unfailing 
obedience to the highest, noblest, best of laws. 
And every Christian was eager to share in the 
work; for there was no Christian who did 
not know his King, and recognize his honor- 
able obligation of service. The least could 
enter the church and standing attentive, make 
the worship his own. The greatest could do 
what was done with generous hand, multiply 
the monastic centres of praise throughout the 
world. And note well, that it was not the 
weakminded, the sentimental, who were the 
men of faith; for monastery building was a 
work of faith, not of superstition. The typi- 


162 THE EXILED KING 


cal founder of abbeys for us English-speaking 
people was that mightiest of kings, William 
the Conqueror. 

Worship, as distinguished from propitia- 
tion, is the chief human function in Christ’s 
Kingdom. This does not mean that in it 
propitiation has no place. On the contrary, 
so long as this world lasts propitiation will 
be necessary. But the necessity arises, not 
as in old pagan ideas, from a malevolence in 
the god, but from the shortcomings and sins 
of men. Wecan propitiate God for our sins, 
not through any power in ourselves or in the 
creatures we offer Him, but because He wills 
to be propitiable, and has made Himself 
the sacrifice of propitiation. This continual 
work of propitiation the Church tells us is 
not only the effect of omnipotence, but is also 
its greatest effect. ‘“O God, who dost mani- 
fest thine omnipotence most of all in forgiving 
and showing pity, multiply upon us thy 
mercy”.'"* In the Kingdom of Christ for- 
giveness of sin is no mere imputation of 
Christ’s justice, no simple closing, as it were, 


172 Collect, x Sunday after Pent. 


THE SOCIAL LIFE 163 


of the Divine eyes. It is a regeneration, a 
new creation. All the omnipotence of the 
Three Persons of the Adorable Trinity is 
called for. Man is forgiven, because God has 
sworn by Himself to forgive. “As I live, 
saith the Lord God, I desire not the death of 
the wicked; but that the wicked turn from 
his way and live’’.*7* 

Propitiation, then, is first the work of Jesus 
Christ. It is the work of the King for His 
people, as adoration is the work of the people 
for their King. Nevertheless, this is to be 
taken in no exclusive sense. There is no 
adoration but in spirit, animated by the Spirit, 
that vivifies the Kingdom. There is no pro- 
pitiation in which the sinner moved by the 
Spirit does not do his part. Moreover, both 
works have their social character. To re- 
nounce sin, to grieve for the past, to resolve 
for the future, these are personal obligations, 
resting on the sinner himself. To win grace 
by imitating Christ in corporal austerities, this 
may be social. Constrained by the charity of 
Christ the saint may win grace for the living 


173 Ezech. xxxili, 11. 


164 THE EXILED KING 


sinner, he may satisfy the debt of the sinner 
departing this life in grace. This winning 
of souls for their King was the crown of the 
monastic service of penitential praise. 

Such was the ideal human life of the ages 
of faith. No human intellect conceived it. 
It was the necessary corollary of the nature 
of Christ’s royalty, as conceived in the Divine 
Mind. But the human intellect raised to the 
supernatural state by sanctifying grace, en- 
dowed with the virtues of faith, hope and 
charity, enlightened with actual grace could 
accept its supreme excellence, and the human 
will, moved by grace, could embrace it. So 
multitudes filled the monasteries to serve the 
King, and so to serve their brethren both in 
Church and state. 

“But the corruption of the monasteries was 
notorious. No wonder the Reformers swept 
them away”’. | 

This would bring up a long question. We 
may grant much to human frailty, and still 
be able to say that the corruption was greatly 
exaggerated. The chief witnesses to it were 
the men whose interest it was to exaggerate, 


THE SOCIAL LIFE 165 


the Reformers themselves who coveted the 
possessions of the monks and hated a way of 
life that was a rebuke to their own lax morals. 
In the second place the life in a relaxed mon- 
astery was better and purer than the life 
outside. Not all the monks were evil livers. 
Indeed the proportion of those whose lives 
were above reproach from seculars, was be- 
yond all comparison greater than was to be 
found amongst those that blamed them for 
not living up to the high perfection of their 
state. Lastly, the monasteries, inasmuch as 
their life was supernatural, had within them- 
selves the principle of renovation, as the Cath- 
olic Reform proved clearly. 

What concerns us here is that where monas- 
ticism was preserved, Christ retained His 
honor amongst men. Where it was extin- 
guished Christ is virtually forgotten. In this 
latter days we have had the process working 
out under our eyes. The suppression of 
monasteries: the decay of Christian faith, the 
revival of the antichristian power. To name 
countries would be invidious. Suffice it to 
say that both hemispheres furnish striking 


166 THE EXILED KING 


examples. On the other hand, given any case 
of the revival of religion favored in the least 
degree, or even passively permitted, by the 
secular power, and the re-establishment of 
monasteries 1s the first sign of renewal of 
faith. 


CHAPTER IX 
THE CORPORAL WORKS OF MERCY 


Socialism has seized upon modern men with 
a grasp that refuses to let go. There are 
many explanations of its vigor, which belong 
to economics or even to mechanics. With 
these we have nothing to do, except to remark 
in passing that, taken in themselves, they are 
by no means convincing, depending more 
upon the necessitating force of external cir- 
cumstances than upon the invincible power 
of intrinsic evidence. A workman seems 
confident that labor is the sole source of 
wealth. As soon as he finds in himself a 
wealth-producing something, that neither is 
labor itself nor labor reductively, he will 
change his mind. When he marches in pro- 
cession with hundreds or even thousands of his 
fellow workmen, he is ready to affirm that la- 


bor is the sole bond of stable union in any 
167 


168 THE EXILED KING 


society. A regiment of lancers and a few 
machine-guns will modify that opinion; es- 
pecially if he who once asserted it so eagerly, 
has become an employer. Nothing is more 
changeable than the theories of Socialism, ex- 
cept the Socialist himself. 

Yet Socialism remains and is going to re- 
main, unless the unexpected happens. It may 
drop one theory after another, but the thing 
itself will remain unshaken. After all, say 
the Socialists, we are working tentatively only. 
Plans may prove unworkable, arguments may 
be refuted: the truth behind them all cannot 
be upset. [here is a truth. “lhe weryeuge 
workableness of every socialistic experiment, 
instead of destroying the system as it would, 
were there no such truth, makes its existence 
the more certain, because failure leaves the 
principle untouched. Yet the same unwork- 
ableness shows that the fundamental truth 
is seen neither clearly nor distinctly. Hence 
those who would live by it deduce unwar- 
ranted conclusions. ‘Those who do not want 
“it can ignore it themselves, and keep others 
in habitual unconsciousness of it. 


CORPORAL WORKS OF MERCY 169 


This truth, so long buried, today only par- 
tially disinterred, is, that no man can be 
absolute lord and master of even the smallest 
material thing. God has created all things 
with a capability of being possessed. He has 
made man capable of taking possession and 
of retaining possession. ‘This man does, not 
like the wild beasts, by physical force, but 
by the moral force of justice. Yet God has 
not distributed his creatures, assigning to each 
its proper owner. ‘The heaven of heaven is 
the Lord’s; but the earth He has given to the 
children of men’,** collectively, not distri- 
butively,; so that according to natural law no 
one can be denied the right to possess: no one 
can actually possess, unless he fulfills the con- 
ditions of natural law, and those determined 
by civil authority to make evident that the 
conditions of natural law have been fulfilled. 

Nevertheless we may gather from nature, as 
Suarez observes, that private ownership is ac- 
cording to God’s providence, that He guar- 
antees titles legitimately acquired. Hence 
whatever part civil authority may have had 


174 Ps, cxiii, 16. 


170 THE EXILED KING 


in defining these, once they have been per- 
fected, dominion in the external order passes 
with them, never to be directly nullified. 
Yet nothing of all this can in any way neu- 
tralize the right of the lowest or vilest of men. 
The tramp passing through the fields and or- 
chards, or by the shops that line the streets, 
has no right, apart from the case of utter 
need, to any particular thing. Yet he is one 
of the children of men; and as such he carries 
untouched by circumstances of character and 
life, his right to live on and from the earth. 
It is therefore, clear that whatever may be 
acquired by way of dominion, comes to each 
conditioned with this universal right of all 
mankind. 

We said that over private ownership civil 
authority has no direct jurisdiction. Indi- 
rectly it may do much, since its function is — 
to provide in general for the common good. 
Under certain social conditions, arising, as 
we shall see, from the decay of Christian 
ideas, the general care of the poor and the 
afflicted may devolve upon it; and conse- 
quently the right to exact by way of taxation 


CORPORAL WORKS OF MERCY 171 


the means to exercise that care. But it has 
no right to prescribe for one any almsgiving 
required by the law of charity. Love belongs 
to the interior. The civil power can not or- 
der one to love; and it can not chastise any 
lack of love. It can not exact from me the 
fulfillment of the obligation of charity to- 
wards this individual or that; since neither 
this nor that has an evident title against me. 
So far, then, as civil society is concerned, my 
dominion is absolute; and bear in mind that 
such questions as the right of taxation do not 
touch dominion directly. The civil power 
defines, protects, puts the conditions necessary 
for the valid transfer of titles, but it does not 
in this confer dominion. Ina word, the state 
does not give me what I possess, subject to 
certain liens which it creates. 

But this is what God does. He does even 
more. He gives me, provided certain con- 
ditions are executed, particular goods for a 
certain purpose. This is in general, to enable 
me to attain my last end. In particular, it 
is to use these goods in the conjunctures of 
each day, according to His law of charity, in 


W/Z THE EXILED KING 


which is safeguarded the right of all to have 
their ordinary needs supplied directly or in- 
directly by the earth which He has given for 
that purpose to all mankind. Moreover since 
He has given in trust, He imposes on me the 
obligation of a strict accounting. Conse- 
quently, with regard to God, I am a steward, 
notanowner. I hold His goods to administer 
them for the welfare of myself and all with 
whom I am brought in contact; not to con- 
sume them for my own individual gratifica- 
tion. ‘The sense of this fundamental truth and 
of its serious neglect amongst men today, 
is the strength of Socialism. 

The clear understanding of this truth and 
of its practical application in social life, made 
Socialism impossible in the ages of faith. 
Communism, it is true, appeared from time 
to time in a sporadic way. But it came as a 
consequence of some heresy, not as an eco- 
nomic or social system. Never was the sense 
of private ownership in the natural order 
keener; never, the sense of stewardship in the 
supernatural order more compelling. Why 
this was, can not be a matter of doubt. The 


CORPORAL WORKS OF MERCY 173 


reality and vigor of the Kingdom of Christ 
with its constant view of God, the beginning 
and end of all human activity, of the brother- 
hood of men redeemed by the Precious Blood, 
of the transitory condition of Christ’s King- 
dom on earth, which is but the preparation in 
passing time of the Kingdom eternal in the 
heavens; all conduced to this clearness of vis- 
ion, which the ‘revolt against the Kingdom, 
with the consequent dimming of those truths 
in men’s minds, was too soon to obscure. 

The first thing to be noticed in the man of 
the ages of faith is that in the poor and 
afflicted he saw Jesus Christ; and the poorer 
and more afflicted the object, the clearer ap- 
peared in him the image of Christ. The final 
judgment was always close to him. “When 
the Son of Man shall come in His majesty and 
all the angels with Him, then shall He sit 
on the throne of His majesty; and all nations 
shall be gathered together before Him, and 
He shall separate them from one another, 
as the shepherd separates the sheep from the 
goats, and He shall set the sheep on His right 
hand, and the goats on His left. Then shall 


174 THE EXILED KING 


the King say to them that shall be on His 
right hand: Come, ye blessed of my Father, 
possess you the Kingdom prepared for you 
from the foundation of the world. For I was 
hungry, and you gave me to eat, I was thirsty, 
and: you “gave me to ')drink; TD awaseee 
stranger, and you took me in, naked, and you 
covered me; sick, and you visited me; I was in 
prison, and you came to me. . . . As long as 
you did it to one of these my least brethren, you 
didiitto mes 

This description of the judgment is the ex- 
plicit declaration of three preceding parables, 
which deal with the three classes of goods 
God entrusts to man’s care. That of the Stew- 
ard deals with material goods. With them 
he must feed the family. Should he convert 
them to his own purposes, he fails in his trust 
and falls under judgment. The Virgins’ oil 
is grace: its flame in the lamp, good works 
for God through our fellows. If the former 
be neglected, the latter fail; and the culprit 
comes to judgment. The Talents are the per- 
sonal qualities and gifts of each man. As 


175 Matt. xxv, 31-40. 


CORPORAL WORKS OF MERCY 17s 


man is social their use is necessarily social. 
They regard the neighbor in a special way, 
since to turn them to mere personal use is 
arrogance and pride. Well employed they 
have their reward: abused they bring man into 
judgment. Such the doctrine of the parables. 

Then laying parables aside, Our Lord in 
His Regal Office puts before us the judgment 
in its reality. It is essentially a social act. 
The King on the throne of His majesty deals 
with the subjects of His Kingdom, examining 
into their service as subjects, not merely into 
their morality, as individuals. And though 
for obvious reasons the process mentions ex- 
plicitly the corporal works of mercy only, 
it does not do so exclusively. Their com- 
plements, the spiritual works, are necessarily 
implied. Though from this passage and from 
the Sermon on the Mount an argument is often 
drawn for an undogmatic Christianity of gen- 
eral good-will, none should fail to see that its 
serious formulating is but a lamentable proof 
of a willingness to rest on the surface of the 
Gospel, and of a carelessness of its true mean- 
ing, fatuous, in view of the paramount im- 


176 THE EXILED KING 


portance for the creature of the Creator’s 
revealed word. For such a mind the supreme 
judicial process is but a pretty parable of the 
happiness of Altruism. For us it embraces 
the whole Christian revelation and doctrine. 
This is its essential splendor and truth. 
Christ is King, not figuratively, but really, 
with a right to all we are and have. He must 
have an evident title. Hence the process 
supposes necessarily the Creation, the Fall, 
the Redemption of man. All are His sub- 
jects by the obligation consequent upon 
Creation and Redemption. They are subject 
then to a definite law corresponding with the 
nature of the Kingdom confirming the general 
duty of natural morality. This law is to use 
created things to promote the welfare of the 
Kingdom in our fellow subjects, and to pay 
them whom the king appoints receivers, the 
tribute He sees fit to exact. ‘This necessitates 
the acknowledgment of our dependence on 
Christ as God for all we have; that we are 
bound to our fellow subjects, not by mere 
natural considerations, of common origin, 
common nature, common needs to be satisfied 


CORPORAL WORKS OF MERCY 177 


by creatures given for the service of all, but 
in particular, because every Christian is 
identified with Christ. This identification is 
much more than a mere external attribution, 
as when one says, “whatever you do for my 
friend, I will take as done for myself”. It 
rests on the internal elevation of redeemed 
and regenerate human nature. Here shines 
forth all St. Paul’s sublime doctrine of Grace, 
of the Church, at once Christ’s Spouse and 
His Body, of which we are the members as 
He is the Head, living with His life not with 
our own natural life. “I live, now not I; 
but Christ liveth in me. And that I live now 
in the flesh, I live in the faith of the Son of 
God, who loved me and delivered Himself 
FOGG Gru. 

This view, so out of harmony with the pres- 
ent day, was a commonplace of the ages of 
faith. Wherever one turned he saw it a 
practical principle governing the lives of all. 
The beggar asked an alms for the love of 
God, without shame, because he and the per- 
son from whom he begged were equally 


176 Galat. ii, 20. 


178 THE EXILED KING 


members of Christ. He might meet with re- 
fusal; it was not impossible that he would 
receive a ring or a link of a gold chain. Be- 
tween these extremes were probabilities in- 
numerable. What was so unlikely to be 
outside the calculation of ordinary probabil- 
ity, was that he would be scorned or spurned. 
Should there be nothing to give, the fact 
would be stated courteously, with the prayer 
that God would soon supply for the speaker’s 
inability. None need suffer hunger. No 
one, however poor, would refuse to give some- 
thing out of his poverty. Every monastery 
fed not only the poor at the gate, but travel- 
lers of whatever degree, and this, not as a 
favor, but as a duty of Christian charity. 
Should the wayfarer leave an alms behind 
him, the monastery’s capacity for beneficence 
was increased ; should he not do so, he went on. 
his way with a benediction. The nobles, too, 
did their part. To give a dole was for the 
lord a matter of duty; and in many a castle 
a table was set daily for a fixed number of 
poor to honor some fact of our Saviour’s life. 
The number might be three in memory of the 


CORPORAL WORKS OF MERCY 179 


Holy Family. The commonest was twelve, 
the number of the Apostles. 

The confraternities for the care of prisoners 
were found everywhere. Were these to live 
in bonds, their needs, temporal as well as 
spiritual, were provided for. Were they to 
die for their crimes, they were not the less 
members of Christ’s Kingdom. Whatever 
civil rights they had forfeited, they could not 
be deprived of the least supernatural right. 
The brethren’s office was to see that from the 
scaffold on which he satisfied justice the cul- 
prit entered upon his inheritance in the 
heavenly Kingdom, as free with the freedom 
of Christ, as though he had died the most 
honored in the land. The sick were served 
in hospitals by men and women who gave 
themselves eagerly to serve Christ in His suf- 
fering members, and many a one of high place 
in Church or State came from time to time 
to pay homage to the King by sharing in the 
pious labors. These knew no limit. In days 
when pestilences raged with a violence we 
cannot conceive, there were religious bound 
by special vow to spend themselves absolutely 


180 THE EXILED KING 


in serving the plague-stricken. Another serv- 
ice which with changed circumstances has 
ceased, was the redemption of Christians cap- 
tured by the Moorish pirates infesting the 
Mediterranean. To this work two great or- 
ders consecrated themselves, the Order of Our 
Lady of Mercy and that of the Holy Trinity. 
It was a perilous vocation. The Moors of 
Northern Africa were treacherous. The cli- 
mate was unhealthy. The moral anguish aris- 
ing from the disproportion between the num- 
bers clamoring for release, and the money with 
which release was to be obtained, was intense. 
But the compelling charity of Christ *? was 
greater than the anguish. When money 
failed the religious would take the captive’s 
place, a hostage in place for the ransom; and to 
this supreme service of the King, the Order of 
Our Lady of Mercy was bound by special vow. 
_ Not only was the obligation of charity un- 
derstood to be the law of the Kingdom of 
Christ, but its approval by the King as man- 
ifested by signs and wonders, was a common- 
place. People heard of robbers converted by 


Tha MOORE A. 


CORPORAL WORKS OF MERCY 181 


the charity of holy men more eager to rescue 
their aggressors by giving up their goods, then 
those were to get possession of them. They 
heard of Peter Damian who in utter poverty 
used the coin he found to have a Mass said for 
his parents, rather than to supply his wants. 
The children, such as St. Philip Benizi and 
St. Felix of Valois, who before they could 
speak found a supernatural joy in almsgiving, 
were known to all; and it was told how more 
than one in the same difficulty as St. Elizabeth 
of Hungary, experienced the same relief, the 
food they were blamed for giving too lavishly 
being changed into roses. How frequent was 
the story of monastery or convent foodless 
through a charity that, believing all things *”® 
had bestowed its last loaf on the poor, found 
its want supplied wonderfully, sometimes 
through the ministry of angels. St. John of 
God, as all know, saw the face of Jesus Christ 
looking out to him through the countenances 
of the sick. One of the Giustiniani of Venice 
was Called at night like Samuel, to give shelter 
to a servant of God, no other than St. Ignatius, 


178 y Cor. xiii, 7. 


182 THE EXILED KING 


asleep on his doorstep. <A ring given by St. 
Edward to a beggar asking an alms in the 
name of St. John the Evangelist, was brought 
back to him by the saint himself. The devil 
showing St. John the Almoner several coins, 
and boasting that personating as many times 
a poor beggar, he had got them from him 
fraudulently, was brought to confusion and 
compelled to return the money by the holy 
man’s .calm- rejoinder: (It. makesmngmanas 
ference. What I gave, I gave to God”. St. 
Martin, while yet a catechumen, cut his mili- 
tary cloak in half to clothe a poor mendicant. 
At night Our Lord appeared to him wearing 
what had been bestowed, and saying: ‘With 
this has Martin the Catechumen clothed me.” 
These and a thousand other similar histories 
formed the Christian soul to works of mercy 
in the Kingdom of Christ. 

Nothing shows more clearly the difference 
between modern society, in which the King- 
dom of Christ is unrecognized, and the old 
Christendom of the ages of faith, than their 
respective ideas on the subject of suffering 
humanity. Then Christ was suffering in His 


CORPORAL WORKS OF MERCY 183 


members. Every servant of Christ was bound 
to relieve Him according to His power. In 
no way could one come into closer contact with 
the King, or win a higher degree in His favor, 
than in thus serving Him. The works of 
mercy were works of religion, the civic func- 
tions of the subjects of the Kingdom, not 
momentary, but lasting; establishing ties unit- 
ing member with member, and all with the 
King forever. Now the whole matter is re- 
duced to economics. It is a function of the 
State. Almsgiving is looked upon with dis- 
approbation. Mendicancy is made a mis- 
demeanor. People are encouraged to refuse 
personal charity; and to refer all who seek it 
to the officer or bureau charged with relieving 
distress. Poverty becomes a stigma. To re- 
ceive alms is a humiliation. The word itself 
must not be used. Assistance, aid, take its 
place, with the absurd epithets, pecuniary, 
financial, added to give the appearance of a 
business transaction, rather than of Christian 
charity. Beyond the mere physical effect, no 
good comes to giver or receiver, because in 
the whole system Christ is forgotten. 


184 THE EXILED KING 


One will say that the conditions described 
have their good side. Public institutions for 
the poor, the sick, the aged are now carried 
on, so as to remove the mortifying sense of de- 
pendence. This is true. But unfortunately 
the removal is not effected in the right way. 
In Christendom the mortification was un- 
known. Dependence was a natural condition 
supernaturalized, carrying with it no stigma. 
In begging alms the poor man but exercised 
his right as a suffering member of Christ. 
The giving of the alms was an obligation by 
the King’s strict law. For both giver and 
receiver the transaction was supernatural, be- 
longing rather to heaven than to earth. It 
was the Christian realization of the equality of 
men; of the equality of their rights before the 
Creator, who had given earth and all it con- 
tains to all without exception; of their equality | 
before the Redeemer, who had opened 
Heaven to all, with the entrance into it con- 
ditioned upon the use made of the things of 
earth, inasmuch as they are found distributed 
amongst men. ‘The amelioration we see today 
has no higher source than a general reaction 


CORPORAL WORKS OF MERCY 185 


against the exaggerated individualism which 
followed the loss of Christian principles with 
the passing of Christendom. The right of 
every man to live in and by the world is ac- 
knowledged. Who will enforce and protect 
the right of the weak against the strong? 
Christendom has perished. Christ the King 
is unknown. Only the State is left. To it 
men turn. But the good they justly receive 
comes to them from a vitiated source. Nei- 
ther in the giver nor in the receiver is there 
the thought of God. The giver is a function- 
ary of civil power. He discharges his duty 
well as does any other. He is considerate in 
his way as is the policeman or the conductor, 
or any other engaged in public service. The 
receiver claims his right, not as God’s creature, 
nor as a citizen of Christ’s Kingdom, but as 
one of the democracy. His claim is admitted. 
Its justice is recognized. Relief is provided. 
Sometimes it comes through natural benevo- 
lence. Sometimes, from a sense of justice. 
In some cases utility is the motive. In others, 
fear of the consequences of neglect. In all 
one seeks in vain Christ, the King, and the 


186 THE EXILED KING 


universal motive He propounds: ‘Inasmuch 
as you have done it to one of the least of 
these my little ones, you have done it unto 


) 
e 


me 


a 


CHAPTER X 
CHRISTENDOM AND ITS KING 


We have seen that the first duty of subjects 
to Christ in His Kingdom is worship; that 
this worship must be, not private and personal 
only, but public also and social; and that on 
this account the monastic and religious life 
belonged to the integrity of the organization 
of Christendom. Kings and nobles had their 
differences with the monks. They did not 
like to see them powerful. The monastic 
lands were a grievance, interfering, as the 
temporal lords thought, with the feudal ser- 
vices due the suzerain, and with many of his 
rights. But no one, until the Christian idea 
was weakened, ever looked upon them as use- 
less) Monks were men. Therefore they had 
their faults. The partisans of the temporal 
power made the most of these faults. Such 


as had a ready pen and a sharp wit made them 
187 


188 THE EXILED KING 


the subject of satire, just as men have always 
done and always will do. But the satirist is 
as frail as the object of his satire. If the latter 
has his imperfections, the former will not fail 
to exaggerate and generalize them. ‘The 
more natural the literary culture, the more di- 
rect will be the blows, the grosser will be the 
exaggerations and the broader, the generaliza- 
tions. Hyperbole characterized the earlier 
and more natural satire, as irony and reticence 
marked the later and more artificial, until we 
reach the period when, as he said, who was 
master in the art, one could 


“Damn with faint praise, assent with solemn leer, 
And, without sneering, teach the rest to sneer.’’1*® 


But whatever was the jealousy of nobles, 
whatever the satirist’s wit, all understood that 
the monks and nuns had their place in the 
Christian commonwealth. They discharged 
a necessary function. This function had 
called them into existence. It was a function 
no other could fulfill. Hence it was that, in 
spite of jealousies, kings and lords were well 


179 Pope, Prologue to Satires. 


CHRISTENDOM AND ITS KING 189 


pleased to know that this function was well 
performed in their lands. Philip Augustus 
of France, on his way to the Holy Land, found 
confidence in the midst of a great storm, at 
the hour in which all the religious of his king- 
dom were busy with the night offices. Alfred 
and Charlemagne, with others of minor fame, 
drew much pleasure from hearing the monks 
singing the praises of the supreme King. 
Canute, at the sound of the chant, stopped in 
his course at Ely to listen. To hold a stall 
in some great church was a high satisfaction 
to king or emperor, ready on occasion for his 
partin the choir. All from the highest to the 
lowest felt that the perfect fitness of things was 
attained, when in a well-ordered realm obe- 
dient to its earthly king, due service to the 
heavenly King was paid in full. 

In the worship that night and day went up 
from the multitude of great churches and 
monastic communities, nothing in our Lord’s 
Sacred Humanity was lost sightof. He is our 
Saviour, the propitiation for our sins. He is 
made man for us in the Incarnation. He is 
an infant, a child. He is in labors from His 


190 THE EXILED KING 


youth. He fasts and prays. He preaches 
and works miracles. He isin agony, scourged 
and crowned with thorns. He dies on the 
Cross. He rises in triumph and ascends glor- 
iously to Heaven. He is the source of all 
grace, the fountain of all sanctity. In His 
name the Apostles carry the gospel throughout 
the world. In His strength martyrs, enduring 
to death, win the crown of life. Walking 
after Him in the way of the Cross confessors 
trample under foot the vanities of earth, and 
virgins consecrate themselves entirely to His 
service. Each day of the revolving year pre- 
sented some special aspect of the God-Man, as 
its own object of worship. But day in. day 
out through all the year, one thing was never 
lost sight of, the King reigning in His King- 
dom. In the very first words of the Divine 


office the religious incited one another to the 


worship of His Majesty. ‘Come, let us adore 
the coming King”, they cried as Advent 
opened ‘the year.: ‘Come, let. us adoremine 
King, now of Archangels, now of Angels, now 
of Apostles, now of Martyrs, now of Confes- 
sors, now of Virgins’, introduced each par- 


ee 


CHRISTENDOM AND ITS KING 1091 


ticular feast. On the Feasts of the Holy Cross 
the invitation was to adore, “Christ the cruci- 
fied King”. On that of the Transfiguration 
it was, “Christ the supreme King of Glory”. 
On All Saints, still more splendidly: ‘‘Come, 
let us adore the Lord, the King of Kings, for 
He is the crown of all the Saints”; while in 
the pomp of Corpus Christi, the perfect ex- 
pression of Christendom, the Kingdom in 
which Christ reigned supreme over all Christ- 
ian people, the highest note, perhaps, was 
reached: “Christ the King, the Lord of na- 
tions, come let us adore Him’’. On the other 
hand, even in the mournful shadow of the 
tomb Christ was still the King. In His King- 
dom sorrow was not, as elsewhere, without 
hope.*®*° He is the Resurrection and the 
Life; *®* and so the very Office of the Dead 
began with the joyful cry: “Come, let us 
adore the ‘King, to whom all things live’. 
What is so characteristic of these invitator- 
ies, will be found abundantly in the hymns. 
In fact such is their abundance, that formal 


180; Thess. iv, 12. 
181 John xi, 25. 


192 THE EXILED KING 


quotation would be a task, too difficult. 
Christ holds the palace of David. He is 
Chief among Kings. He is King most admir- 
able, eternal and supreme, triumphing over 
death. He is King of nations and King of 
Israel; since He is the one promised to Abra- 
ham to be the blessing of all people of the 
world. He isthe Prince wedding His spouse, 
the Church. He is the King born of the Vir- 
gin, ruling from the rising of the sun to the 
end of the earth. He is the conquering King, 
freeing the fathers from Limbo. He is King 
of martyrs and of all the citizens of heaven. 
He is the most loving King and the King, 
strength of the strong. He is the King re- 
ceiving His subjects to His royal banquet. 
Even in the humiliation of His Passion He is 
the King of nations shedding His Blood for 
the world. The Cross is His standard; He 
reigns from the wood, stained with the royal 
purple of His Blood. 

So too in the Mass, the Gloria in Excelsis 
is the noblest praise of the King in the widest 
extent of His Kingdom embracing heaven and 
earth. It would be impossible to go through 


CHRISTENDOM AND ITS KING 193 


the missal and note all the royal salutations 
addressed to our Lord Jesus Christ. We shall 
content ourselves with the Mass of the Epi- 
phany, since this is especially the mystery of 
Christ’s Kingdom on earth. The antiphon of 
the introit is the keynote of the whole: 
“Behold the Ruler approaches, the Lord: and 
in His hand, Kingdom, power and empire”. 
The epistle is the prophecy of Isaias. “Arise, 
be enlightened, O Jerusalem’’,*®? which fore- 
tells in glowing terms Christ’s universal King- 
dom. The gospel is, of course, the coming 
of the kings to adore the King. The offertory, 
the Psalmist’s prophecy of that coming, with 
its extension to all Kings and nations of the 
earth. On the Sunday within the octave the 
strain continues. The antiphon of the introit 
runs thus: “I saw a Man sit on a lofty throne, 
and the multitude of angels adored Him sing- 
ing together: Behold Him of whose empire 
the name is forever”. The gradual and offer- 
tory turn upon the Psalm: “Sing joyfully to 
God, all the earth’,’** which supposes the 


182 Iga, Ix, 1. 


183 Ps, xcix. 


194 THE EXILED KING 


Kingdom of Christ established through all the 
world; and the epistle *** leads up to St. Paul’s 
favorite doctrine of Christ’s visible Kingdom: 
“So we, being many, are one body in Christ, 
and everyone members one of another”. At 
first sight the gospel seems to depart entirely 
from the feast. What has the finding of Our 
Lord in the Temple **° to do with His King- 
dom? A little reflection will find the answer 
inthe words: “Did you not know that I must 
be about my Father’s business’? He came 
into the world not to redeem man only and 
then to depart, but to establish His Kingdom, 
of which the foundations are to be laid in the 
sacrifice of the natural to the supernatural. 
This may give a clue to the questions He pro- 
posed to the doctors of the law. ‘That this 
is the point of the passage as sung on this oc- 
casion, we may gather from the repetition of 
the particular question in the communion. 
Thus far we have dealt with the Roman 
Breviary and Missal. In the ages of faith 
when the worship of the King flourished as 


184 Rom, xii, 1-5. 
185 Luke ii, 42-52. 


CHRISTENDOM AND ITS KING 195 


has been indicated, breviaries and missals were 
multiplied; so that not only every rite, as the 
Mozarabic and the Ambrosian, had their own, 
but even every diocese had, at least, its own 
particular offices. In these were celebrated 
the Kingdom of Christ, so patent a reality, 
and the worship of the King, with an affection 
and devotion that move the Christian soul 
most deeply. For good reasons the Roman 
Breviary and Missal are practically universal 
today. But such works asthe Liturgical Y ear 
of Dom Gueranger have gathered for us many 
of those gems of piety and sound doctrine. 

This, then, was the Kingdom of Christ, as 
it began with Our Lord Himself and His 
Apostles, developing under God’s providence, 
in spite of persecution from without and 
treachery from within, passing unscathed 
through storms of heresy, untouched in its 
unity by schisms, until in a civil society purely 
Christian it reached its perfection, the Chris- 
tendom of the ages of faith. Is the worship of 
Christ in His Kingdom, as we have studied it, 
the very Christian religion in practicer Is 
the sum and substance of this, to know God, 


196 THE EXILED KING 


and Jesus Christ, both God and mane ’**® 
Who can doubt this, who hears St. Paul’s 
prayer for his Ephesian Flock? a prayer, and 
at the same time a profession of faith. “I bow 
my knees to the Father of Our Lord Jesus 
Christ, of whom all paternity in heaven and 
earth is named, that He would grant you, ac- 
cording to the riches of His glory, to be 
strengthened by His Spirit with might unto 
the inward man; that Christ may dwell by 
faith in your hearts; that being rooted and 
founded in charity, you may be able to com- 
prehend, with all the saints, what is the 
breadth, and length, and height, and depth: 
to know also the charity of Christ which sur- 
passeth all knowledge, that you may be filled 
with the knowledge of God.” *®” Not less con- 
vincing is the same Apostle’s summary of 
the scope of his ministry: ‘The perfecting — 
of the saints, the edifying of the Body of 
Christ, until we all meet into the unity of the 
faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, 
unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the 


186 John xvii, 3. 
187 Eph. iii, 14, 19. 


CHRISTENDOM AND ITS KING 197 


age of the fullness of Christ’’.*** Nor is St. 
Peter less explicit: ‘All things of His divine 
power which appertain to life and godliness, 
are given us through the knowledge of Him 
who hath called us by His own proper 
glory and virtue. ... For if these things be 
with you and abound, they will make you to 
be neither empty nor unfruitful in the knowl- 
edge of Our Lord Jesus Christ’’.** 

Only one possible doubt remains. It is 
clear that service in the Kingdom is the knowl- 
edge of Christ. Can the knowledge of Christ 
be separated from membership and service 
in the KingdomPe Can the Kingdom perish 
and the knowledge of Christ survive? This 
question we now approach. 


188 Thid. iv, 12, 13. 
1892 Pet. i, 3-8. 


CHAPTER XI 
THE PASSING OF CHRISTENDOM 


Even to enumerate the causes that combined 
to bring about the ruin of the Christian civil 
society, would be an impossible task. Selfish- 
ness, ambition, sensuality, each played a very 
important part. The rebellion of the flesh 
against the spirit is always an element of 
treachery to be guarded against in a super- 
natural society. This St. Paull understood 
when he told the Philippians that of those 
about him none cared for them as Timothy, 
since “All seek the things that are their own, 
not the things that are of Jesus Christ’’.1® 
Moreover the sleepless enemy of Jesus Christ, 
though for a long time under constraint, 
was far from inactive, turning to his purpose 
every human frailty, whether intellectual or 
sensual. Elow many and how diverse these 


190 Philip. ii, 20, 21. 
198 


PASSING OF CHRISTENDOM 199 


were, and how protean was the ingenuity 
that seized upon them, we can easily conjec- 
ture. 

We may, however, dwell at some length 
upon one cause, simple enough in itself, yet 
reaching in its effects to every social grade. 
We have seen how the gradual breaking away 
of Eastern Christianity from the unity of 
which subjection to Peter is the essential bond, 
became in God’s providence the condition for 
the establishing of Christendom. The old 
pagan principle of dominion without limit, of 
absolute supremacy in things: spiritual no 
less than in things temporal, was so in- 
grained in the Roman State, that Constan- 
tine and his successors, though Christian, were 
not free from its baneful influence. Yet with 
the strictly Christian society, in which the 
Kingdom of Christ must have its place, that 
principle was incompatible. Christendom, 
therefore, was founded on the free institutions 
of the barbarian invaders, chiefly Germanic; 
and was built up by the fostering care of the 
Roman Pontiffs who through their mission- 
aries brought the barbarians to the faith, 


200 THE EXILED KING 


christianizing their customs, institutions and 
laws. 

As long as this condition lasted, Christen- 
dom was united and strong. The Holy 
Roman Empire fulfilled its function of guard- 
ing the Christian peoples and of extending the 
field of the Gospel. It was not, it could not 
be, like the Church, spotless, without wrinkle 
or blemish. It was not a supernatural crea- 
tion. It was human, belonging to time, not 
reaching out for its perfection to eternity. 
Nevertheless, while the constitution coming 
from St. Leo III. and Charlemagne lasted, its 
native vigor was such as could expel disease 
and heal all wounds. In itself the Western 
Empire never was a failure. There was no 
intrinsic reason why it should not have flour- 
ished to the end in the work for which it was 
founded. It fell the victim of those who. 
should have preserved it. The arm the em- 
perors contrived to wound the Church, proved 
the very ruin of its contrivers. 

Their ambition was not content with the 
Christian Empire, a height of glory and honor 
never yet attained on earth and beyond which 


PASSING OF CHRISTENDOM 201 


no earthly glory and honor could go. All 
authority is from God; and never was this un- 
derstood so clearly as in the Christendom of 
the ages of faith. The Emperor stood side by 
side with the Vicar of Christ. He was the 
apex of civil power, as the Pontiff was of the 
spiritual. From its close association with the 
spiritual, his empire became, as it were, spirit- 
ualized; and he, the Emperor, was a conse- 
crated person. Hence for Christendom he 
was not the mere possessor of temporal power, 
nor was he as sovereign an element in the 
ordinance of God, in the wider sense wherein 
all rulers share in God’s providential govern- 
ment of the world. He was more than this. 
He was recognized clearly as God’s represent- 
ative in the temporal order in the highest term 
of St. Paul’s doctrine, to be obeyed religiously 
under pain of sin. 

The tenth century was a dark period for 
the Church. A succession of petty princes 
dominated Rome; and controlling the elec- 
tions put whom they pleased in the Pontifical 
Chair. Obviously it was the Emperor’s func- 
tion to do away with such evils in their cause. 


202 THE OE XTIVEDYKATING 


Had Otho the Great been content with this he 
would have been another Charlemagne. Un- 
fortunately he had to deal with one of the 
Tusculans, John XII., grandson of the in- 
famous Marozia, who, ignoring all Otho’s 
benefits, broke his oath of alliance and united 
himself to the Emperor’s foes. Provoked be- 
yond measure, Otho attempted to depose 
John, and to dictate the pontiff to be elected. 
His successors without such provocation fol- 
lowed a similar high-handed course in deal- 
ing with the spiritual power. The climax 
came, not under Henry IV., whose personal 
arrogance was overcome by St. Gregory VIL., 
but, with Frederick Barbarossa, who made the 
University of Bologna, an imperial school to 
teach the Justinian Code embracing the old 
imperial ideas, in opposition to the law of the 


Church and its doctrine of the Christian — 


Commonwealth. 

Thus the pagan idea of the prince as the 
origin of all law, the sole arbiter of right, the 
master without appeal of his subjects, supreme 
in every order, was brought back into Europe 
to be the source of untold future evil. 


PASSING OF CHRISTENDOM 203 


For the Civil Law was not a weapon against 
ecclesiastical law only. It was turned against 
the free institutions of the Germanic peoples. 
The minor princes welcomed its autocratic 
principles. From Bologna went out doctrine 
in its nature unchristian, whereby in lands 
independent of the empire, kings strove to sub- 
due both the nobility and the Church; lords 
brought their peasants into slavery; towns lost 
their liberties; the trade-guilds were weak- 
ened; with the consequence that every heresy 
offering a prospect of lightening the yoke from 
the people, Albigensian, Waldensian, Frati- 
cellian, Wiclifian, Hussite, found discon- 
tented spirits to welcome them. 

At last came the great Reformation, the 
nemesis of Barbarossa’s treason against Christ- 
endom. The Justinian Code, if it maimed in 
some way the Kingdom of Christ, was the 
beginning of the Empire’s overthrow. ‘The 
rejection of the Catholic Faith appealed to 
German princes, not only as a means of grat- 
ifying their passions, extending their territor- 
ies, filling their treasuries, but also as ensuring 
their emancipation from, imperial authority, 


204 THE EXILED KING 


and enabling them to set up an absolutism 
utterly pagan culminating in the principle, 
that the sovereign’s religion must be the reli- 
gion of his subjects. 

It was a steady paganizing of society. 
Christendom became a mere name. In pub- 
lic life the Thirty Years War was its death. 
The treaty of Westphalia was its official fu- 
neral., 

For a brief hundred and forty years the 
prince, with a few exceptions, was to be every- 
thing. The Kingdom of Christ was to be but 
a department in his government. The pro- 
tests, the warnings, the very teachings of the 
Vicar of Christ were received by Catholic 
sovereigns, sometimes with tolerance, some- 
times with impatience. Sometimes they were 
even rejected. But whether they were per- 
mitted or rejected, the principle was laid 
down, and acted on unless the monarch’s per- 
sonal conscience got the better of his official 
Christianity, that without the permission of 
the temporal ruler, the Vicar of Christ might 
not communicate with the subjects of Christ. 


PASSING OF CHRISTENDOM 205 


This was nothing less than the denial by 
Christian Kings, Catholic Kings, Faithful 
Kings, Apostolic Kings, Holy Roman Emper- 
ors, not to mention titles less significant, of the 
very existence of the Kingdom of Christ. 
Society retained the outward form of 
Christianity. In it were found many saints, 
doing the work of the Kingdom quietly 
amongst men; for whatever may be the hostil- 
ity of the kingdoms of this world, the King- 
dom of Christ cannot perish. The kingdom 
of this world became the Lord’s Kingdom 
forever #®* when imperial Rome adored the 
Crucified. There would be revolts, apparent 
triumphs of the world-power. Satan would 
resume his activity in his efforts to destroy. 
But Christ must reign in His Kingdom, 
through storm and calm and succeeding storm, 
seemingly conquered, yet ever victorious. 
His witnesses shall be slain. Their bodies 
shall lie in the streets of the city in view of all 
the tribes and peoples and nations and tongues. 
And all the earth shall rejoice in their death 


191 Apoc. xi, 15. 


206 THE EXILED KING 


congratulating one another and exchanging 
gifts, till the brief joy shall be suddenly 
ended by the voice from heaven recalling the 
martyrs to life, and by the earthquake destroy- 
ing their murderers.**? For Christ must reign 
until He has put all His enemies beneath His. 
feet.°* Would men but open their eyes, they 
would see how what is to be verified to the full 
in Elias and Enoch, has nevertheless, again 
and again by a foreshadowing of things to 
come, been seen in the history of the Church. 

So too during those sad times there was a 
multitude of true subjects of the Kingdom, 
serving Christ the King in simplicity of heart. 
Yet the spirit that animated society was not 
Christian. Deism, the denial of Christ, 
rather than Atheism the denial of God, was the 
approved religious theory. A philosophy 
that sneered at every Christian mystery and 
doctrine was the mark of the pretended wis- 
dom. An ethic in which the Kingdom of 
Christ could have no place, undertook the 
renovation of the world and the restoration of 


192 Thid. 7-12. 
198 x Cor. (xv, 25; 


PASSING OF CHRISTENDOM 207 


the Golden Age. Then came the Revolution 
and after it the Modern World for which 
Christendom is a romance: the Kingdom of 
Christ in the Catholic Church, an anachro- 
nism. 


CHAPTER XII 


“WE WILL NOT HAVE THIS MAN 
TO REIGN OVER US” 


If the Kingdom be regarded as an anachro- 
nism, this can be only because the King is no 
longer recognized. We have seen how from 
the time of Constantine the attacks on the 
Church were generally directed against, not 
the doctrine, but the person of the King. His 
Divinity was denied. His Humanity was im- 
paired, either by confounding it with the 
Divinity or by making an entire separation 
between them. His Human operation, neces- 
sary for the Redemption, without which there. 
could be no Kingdom, was rejected. When 
these assaults failed the King was attacked 
through His Vicar. Nevertheless, the attack 
was, as yet, indirect. No one dreamed of de- 
nying to the Roman Pontiff the prerogatives 


of Peter. ‘These the enemy limited, with the 
208 


WE WILL NOT HAVE THIS MAN 209 


view of making them inoperative, by claiming 
the second place for Constantinople, on no 
other title than its place in the purely temporal 
order as the new Rome. The claim to second 
place was soon pushed to mean an equality, 
then an independence, lastly to include the 
right to judge Christ’s Vicar. Such claims, if 
admitted, would overthrow the Kingdom es- 
tablished by Christ, substituting for ita human 
contrivance, changeable in its nature and 
changing actually with changing times. 

As the age of faith waned in Europe a par- 
allel attack on the ‘Kingdom of Christ de- 
veloped. One element of this borrowed from 
the pagan past, we have noticed already, the 
bringing back of Roman Casarism to make 
the temporal sovereign absolute and univers- 
ally supreme. Another was entirely new. 
Breaking with the tradition of fifteen cen- 
turies, the Reformers boldly renounced the 
Kingdom of Christ. The Church, they said, 
was invisible tohumaneye. It was no society. 
Still less was it a Kingdom in any true sense. 
It was the multitude of the enlightened, or of 
those who had received the grace of conver- 


210 THE EXILED: KING 


sion and saving faith. But as they came 
to consider grace incapable of being lost, con- 
stituting a man once and forever saved, the 
Church was for them the company of the elect 
known only to God. Their doctrine, found 
among the Albigenses, the Waldensians, the 
Lollards and Hussites, in every sect leading 
up to the great revolt of Luther and Calvin 
and their fellows, rendered nugatory the 
whole visible organization of the Church. 
There could be no hierarchy or priesthood, if 
one’s very membership in the Church de- 
pended upon a condition invisible to the rest 
of men; a condition so far from being clearly 
evident to the individual himself, as to require 
the invention of the doctrine of assurance of 
salvation, that is, a blind conviction of sin and 
an equally blind confidence that’ God had 


covered that sin with the merits of Christ. — 


There could be no valid sacraments unless the 
official character of the minister were evident. 
But according to the new doctrines that char- 
acter vanished with the loss of grace, and could 
not be received but by one possessing grace. 
On the other hand, one assured that he was 


WE WILL NOT HAVE THIS MAN art 


numbered with the elect needed no sacra- 
ments. Religion became thus a matter purely 
personal. Bishop, priest, sacrament, as un- 
derstood in the Catholic Church became un- 
necessary. Even more. They were looked 
on as obstacles, the work of the devil to im- 
pede God’s mercy. Each man was to himself 
a prophet, priest, and king. Such was the nec- 
essary theory. It could not be reduced to 
practice. For man, essentially social, pure 
individualism is impossible. He must live 
under either authority or tyranny. Hence 
Protestantism had its organization, to which 
submission was required; and its teachers, 
more intensely dogmatic than any Roman 
Pontiff could be. Indeed this is one of the 
wonderful characteristics of the Church of 
God, the Kingdom of Christ, that in it alone 
theory and practice coincide, that is, the prac- 
tical working of the Church in perfect con- 
formity with its dogmatic teaching. 

In the Reformation Cesarism of princes 
and the notion of the invisible Church of the 
elect, were bound up together. But the bond 
was the tyranny of the prince and the subser- 


212 THE EXILED KING 


vience of the subject. The prince, for mo- 
tives of his own, would declare for the 
Reform; and would straightway order the 
people to embrace it under the particular as- 
pect that he approved. Thus they were to be 
Lutheran or Calvinistic or Zwinglian; and 
they were to pass from one to the other accord- 
ing to the changing policy of their sovereign, 
to whom God had committed their eternal des- 
tinies no less than their temporal. But what- 
ever was the distinguishing article of each 
particular kind of Protestantism, all agreed 
that Rome was Babylon, that the Pope was 
Antichrist, that the Catholic worship of fif- 
teen cenuries was idolatrous, pagan, diaboli- 
cal. This, indeed was their bond of union. 
Their differences touching grace, election, the 
sacraments, were so many and so grave; their 
consequent antipathies so intense; their mutual 
persecutions so relentless; that Protestantism 
would have destroyed itself, had not the 
greater hatred of Rome held it together. 
Three things in Catholic practice stirred it 
to fury, the monastic life, holy images and the 
Mass. 


WE WILL NOT HAVE THIS MAN 213 


Monastic life is, as we have seen, of the 
integrity of Christianity. The Creator, Pre- 
server, Redeemer of men dwells among them. 
To Him by day and by night from commun- 
ities consecrated to His Service goes up 
perpetual praise. They praise Christ their 
ever-living King, ruling in His universal 
Kingdom, on earth the militant Church, in 
heaven the Church triumphant. This is an 
element of Christianity coming out of its very 
nature, differentiating it from all preceding 
worship. The worship of Israel at best but 
faintly foreshadowed it in the night ejacula- 
tions of the temple guards.’** This sublime 
function linking earth to heaven continually 
by an unceasing profession of our threefold 
dependence on Christ, Protestantism attacked 
as unnatural, superstitious. Christians had 
always held that, as it is most perfect service, 
it is, proportionately to the mode in which it 
is paid, the most meritorious. This view was 
now held to detract most blasphemously from 
the merits of Christ. How the giving to 
Christ what is His right by virtue of His 


194 Ps, cxxxiill, 


214 THE EXILED KING 


supreme merits with regard to both God and 
man, could detract from these merits, no Re- 
former ever explained. What was so obvious 
as to need no explanation was, that the stop- 
ping of the perennial praise of the King would 
lead inevitably to the forgetting of his title 
to that praise. His royalty would become 
obscure. Why He is royal, would become 
still more so. And so, indeed, it happened. 
Christ in Protestant theology became the sub- 
stitute for the sinner, as such the object of the 
Father’s anger. He despairs, He suffers in 
the privation of the beatific vision the torments 
of damnation. These and other opinions 
equally incompatible with His divinity, be- 
came leading doctrines of the Protestant the- 
ologians. The royalty of the Redeemer, the 
necessary corollary of His Godhead, the rec- 
ognition of which compels the confession that 
He is both God and Man, had no place in 
their system. This, indeed, had gone so far 
from Catholic doctrine, that the most elemen- 
tary notions of gratitude and love had vanished 
from it. “Lay your sins on Jesus. He pays 
the price. Consequently, since the glory of 


WE WILL NOT HAVE THIS MAN ars 


the Redemption is not the Incarnation of the 
Eternal Word, nor the establishment of His 
Kingdom, nor His royal rule over men, but 
His vicarious suffering for sin, the more 
abundant the sin, the bitterer the pain, the 
greater is God’s glory. Have, therefore, no 
scruple. Lay your sins on the Lamb of God 
without remorse. Sin freely, the more freely 
the better. But believe more vigorously that 
Christ makes all your sins His own. ‘Thus 
you will do your part in working out the 
divine plan”. ‘This is the horrible doctrine 
the Reformers substituted for the Gospel of 
the Kingdom. Their leaders put it in prac- 
tice and lost every Christian sentiment. 
Their followers, more innocent that they, have 
rarely so grasped the full meaning of their 
doctrine, as to follow it out in its consequences. 
They have known something of the love of 
Christ. They have given Him a love that 
Luther, Calvin, Melanchthon, and their fel- 
lows had renounced. But it came to them 
from Christ the ‘King, who can not be cast 
out utterly from the world He has redeemed. 
He will reign in some salutary way even in 


216 THE EXILED KING 


hearts that know not His royalty, provided 
only they do not deliberately shut Him out. 

A hatred of holy images, the renewal of the 
Iconoclast heresy, was the second universal 
characteristic of the Reformation. In it the 
Lutherans did not go quite as far as the other 
sects. They still showed some half-hearted 
honor to the Crucifix. But for the images of 
of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the saints 
they had no mercy. Here the denunciation 
of idolatry indicated apparently a devout zeal 
for the worship of God. We have shown in 
a previous chapter what idolatry really was. 
In Catholic practice there was no idolatry. 
The very tales of miraculous crucifixes and 
images which the Reformers sometimes in- 
vented, otherwise misinterpreted and exagger- 
ated, even as they told them, contained no trace 
of idolatry. With Christians the image could 
not be a god. But the mob-vioclence, which, 
destroyed altar, image and shrine, exhibited 
too often unmistakable signs of diabolical 
activity, of obsession at least, if not of posses- 
sion. 

The veneration of the images of saints is 


WE WILL NOT HAVE THIS MAN 217 


bound up with the veneration of the saints 
themselves; and this rests upon the dogmatic 
teaching of the Christian religion. It is but 
the expansion of the article of the Creed: 
“T believe in the Communion of Saints”; and 
may be summed up briefly. The saints in 
glory have power to help us with their inter- 
cession. ‘They exercise that power. It is 
God’s will that we should have recourse to 
them. The solemn act of canonization de- 
clares infallibly that the one canonized is 
among the saints, and therefore to be invoked. 
Our invocation and the saint’s intercession are 
not independent of the perpetual intercession 
of Christ, apart from which neither the one 
nor the other would have any efficacy. The 
Saint is an integral element of the divine plan 
of the distribution of grace through the merits 
of Jesus Christ. From such a multiplied 
pleading of His merits by the innumerable 
host of heavenly citizens Jesus Christ receives 
great external glory. The constant fulfilling 
through the grace of Christ of the law of char- 
ity commanding mutual prayer *° both in 


195 James v, 14, 16; Col. i, 9; Philip. i, 9; 2 Thess. i, 11. 


218° THE EXILED KING 


heaven and on earth,**® is most grateful to 
God, and beneficial to man. Now, given the 
fact of the saints’ intercession, we justly con- 
clude that, since they are intelligent beings, 
it is in accordance with the most perfect order 
that their intercession should be determined 
by their relations with men on earth, and that 
these should choose particular saints as patrons 
and protectors according to the same relations. 

But everyone can see that all this implies a 
most complex organization in the supernatural 
heavenly Kingdom. Not only has each in- 
dividual his own place and function under 
the Supreme Head in the great celestial life; 
but he has also his definite relations to that 
part of the Kingdom here on earth, in which 
his brethren are preparing for the perfect 
citizenship and fellowship of the saints. Ina 
word the Communion of Saints is but another 
aspect of the Kingdom ever on our Lord’s lips, 
instituted by Him in His mortal life, con- 
firmed in His death, and resurrection, or- 
ganized during the forty days before the 


196 2 Mach. xv, 14; Apoc. vi, 10; Viil, 3. 


WE WILL NOT HAVE THIS MAN 219 


ascension, and perfected in the sending of the 
Holy Ghost. The images and pictures of 
saints are the sensible signs, necessary among 
men who are corporeal as well as spiritual, 
of these divinely instituted social relations. 
Their location in this particular place or that, 
is the visible proclamation of the relation be- 
tween special persons and places, and some 
individual saint. ‘To attack this, is to attack 
the divinely instituted Kingdom, and thus to 
attack Him whose will it is, not only to redeem 
and to restore, but also to grant to the re- 
deemed and restored all those intimate rela- 
tions of love and service, which must exist 
between the redeeming and restoring King, 
and the subjects redeemed and restored. 

But among the saints one was the object of 
special hostility, the Blessed Virgin Mary. 
Through her the Supreme King is attacked 
much more intimately than through any other, 
as through her intercession He wills to be 
moved more eflicaciously. She receives a 
worship all her own. It differs absolutely in 
its very nature from that paid to Her divine 


220 THE EXILED KING 


Son; it is in degree far above what is given to 
the highest of the saints. We call her Queen 
of Heaven, and rightly so. Yet she is royal, 
not of absolute right, but by the will of God 
decreeing her royalty as the consequence of 
the Incarnation. We believe that through 
her all grace flows to men. But we say 
through, not from. She is the channel, not 
the fountain, the distributor according to the 
Divine will, not the originator. All this goes 
back to the Incarnation. ‘Through her God 
gave us the Eternal Son, made man for our 
salvation. But she is not the principle of that 
work purely divine. Giving us through her 
the Sum and Substance of all grace, what more 
consonant to the perfection which must char- 
acterize all God’s works, than the making 
her the medium of its distribution? What 
more evident than that with all the power pos- 
sible in a simple creature, she can not be more 
than a medium? 

The Incarnation, then, fixes necessarily 
Mary’s place in the plan of Redemption. In 
this, “Mother of God,” is her official title. 
‘Whence is this to me, that the Mother of my 


WE WILL NOT HAVE THIS MAN 221 


Lord should come to me?” cried St. Elizabeth 
filled with the Holy Ghost.1*%* The denying 
of this title to Mary was the essential formula 
of Nestorian heresy. Its confirmation by the 
Council of Ephesus was the essential formula 
of that heresy’s condemnation. Nestorianism 
consists in asserting that our Lord was at first 
man purely and simply; and that at some sub- 
sequent time, anointed by the Holy Ghost, He 
became the dwelling place of the Divinity, 
and in this sense united to the Divine Nature. 
Evidently it is not essential to this error to 
determine the moment of this anointing, in 
which the indwelling began. In the crudest 
form the error fixes this for the moment after 
Our Lord’s Baptism, when the Holy Ghost 
descended upon Him from the opened heav- 
ens, and the Voice from the Cloud proclaimed 
Him God’s beloved Son. But it would be no 
less an error to imagine Our Lord developing 
gradually a body and organism to receive in 
the process of time a human soul, and in its in- 
fusion union with the Divine Nature. Sucha 
conception, however miraculous, would of its 


197 Luke ii, 41, 42. 


222 THE EXILED KING 


nature call for a human soul only. The Di- 
vine Nature would be something superadded, 
as by an afterthought. The Blessed Virgin 
would be but mother of the man, and no subse- 
quent communication of the Divine Nature 
to her son could make her Mother of God. 
Here we see the latent Nestorianism of 
popular Protestantism which will allow the 
Blessed Virgin to be Mother of Christ, but 
refuses absolutely to call her by her dogmatic 
title) Mother of God. ‘To verify this the 
hypostatic union must be intrinsic to the 
conception itself. No after-communication, 
however soon effected, could make Mary 
God’s Mother. We must understand that the 
Incarnation was entirely miraculous. From 
the substance of the Blessed Virgin the Holy 
Ghost simultaneously formed the little Body, 
united it with the Human Soul in that mo- 
ment created, and with the uncreated Divine 
Nature in the Second Person of the Holy 
Trinity, so that one thing was conceived, not 
by the blending of the Divine Nature and the 
Human into one, but by their union in the 
Person of the Word. ‘The Person thus con- 


WE WILL NOT HAVE THIS MAN 223 


ceived was God. He never had been other 
than God. Henever could be any other. Of 
this Person the Blessed Virgin is Mother; 
for with regard to Him she performed all the 
functions of Motherhood. To form His 
Body she gave Her substance. She carried 
Him for the natural term of gestation. Of 
her substance he grew and was nourished, un- 
til the moment came for Him to begin His ex- 
terior life. ‘These are the essential physiolog- 
ical facts of maternity. Other physiological 
considerations have no place here. It is true 
that the Angel said: ‘The Holy Ghost shall 
come upon thee, and the power of the most 
High shall overshadow thee. And therefore 
also the Holy which shall be born of thee shall 
be called the Son of God”.1** It is also true 
that some commentators connect the therefore 
with some remote analogy to generation. 
But, at best, the analogy could be but of the 
remotest. ‘The Holy Ghost never is, never 
was, never could be considered in such a rela- 
tion to the Incarnate Word, the Son of the 
Eternal Father. His operation in this mys- 


198 Tuke 1, -35. 


224 THE EXILED KING 


tery finds its analogy in something far differ- 
ent, namely, in His creative function expressed 
in the words: ‘The spirit of God moved over 
the waters’”.’°® The therefore is logical, not 
physical. It gives the reason for the conclu- 
sion, not the origin of the effect from the cause. 
The true sense of the passage is this: From the 
miraculous conception of your Son, and from 
His miraculous birth, you will certainly con- 
clude that He is the Son of God, God made 
Man, and that He is indubitably the expected 
Redeemer as I have announced, bearing the 
Redeemer’s character as foretold by the pro- 
phets, saying: ‘The Lord said to my Lord, 
sit Thou at my right hand”.2° “A virgin 
shall conceive and bear a Son, and His name 
shall be called Emmanuel”.?** “God Him- 
self shall come and save you”.? “A Child 
is born to us, and a Son is given to us, and the 
government is upon His shoulder, and His 
name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, 
God the Mighty, the Father of the World to 


199 Genes, i, 2. 
200 Ps. cix, 1. 
201 Tsa. vii, 14. 
202 Tbid. xxxv, 4. 


WE WILL NOT HAVE THIS MAN 225 


come, the Prince of Peace. His empire shall 
be multiplied, and there shall be no end of 
peace. He shall sit on the throne of David 
and upon His Kingdom, to establish and 
strengthen it with judgment and justice frorh 
henceforth and forever: the zeal of the Lord 
of Hosts will perform this”.°°* The last is 
the very prophecy quoted by the angel. 
Such is the exposition of the text given by 
commentators in general.?%* 

Thus we see how the Council of Ephesus 
made the Blessed Virgin’s title, Mother of 
God, the epitome, so to speak, of the Catholic 
doctrine of the Incarnation. The Kingdom 
of Christ, on earth as in heaven, is the neces- 
sary consequence of the Incarnation. The 
more deeply we penetrate into this mystery, 
the greater becomes the honor we must pay to 
Mary. The image of Mary, next in honor to 
Her Divine Son, seen in every Church, is the 
official profession made by pastor and flock 
of their faith in the Incarnate King, and of 


204 A Lapide, Lacenses, in loc. cit. against Maldonatus and 
others. 


226 THE EXILED KING 


their reverence for His Kingdom, in which 
He can not separate Himself from Her with 
whom, in all that necessitates that Kingdom, 
He was so closely associated. 

The Reformers’ hatred of monasticism and 
of the veneration of saints and their images, 
fierce as it was, might be called rather emotion 
than passion, when compared with the frenzy 
into which they fell at the mention of the Holy 
Sacrifice of the Mass. That in His infinite 
wisdom Christ should find a way to fulfill 
prophecy and promise,*”’ not by some figure, 
but really, they took as a personal injury; and 
not the less readily because the Holy Mass is 
the universal fountain of that Catholic Faith 
and practice which they found so uncongenial. 
It would not be right to reproduce here the 
villainous terms in which they used to revile 
this complement of the Incarnation as the first 
of Christian mysteries, the centre of Christian 
worship from the great day of Pentecost.?°° 
If by an impossibility the whole Christian 
world had been in error until the sixteenth 


205 Malach. i, 11; John vi, 32-59; Matt, xxviii, 20. 
a0eVA cts 1; 742, 


WE WILL NOT HAVE THIS MAN 227 


century, the reverence due to Him involved 
would have necessitated a reverent refutation 
of the error. When a handful of men, not 
even agreeing among themselves, dared to 
attack with vilest language the essential wor- 
ship of all Christians from the beginning, 
nothing more was needed to show that they 
were not moved by the spirit of God. 

The Reformation was no return to a purer 
Christianity. It was a deliberate revolt 
against the religion of Jesus Christ, which is 
essentially the worship of the King in His 
Kingdom. Whatever the Reformers rejected 
is found on examination to have a necessary 
connection with the Kingdom. Whatever 
they introduced was alien to the idea of the 
Kingdom and a sapping of the royalty of the 
King. At best the reformed doctrine was the 
invention of man. In fact, judging it by the 
language, the public violence, the private im- 
morality, the deep hypocrisy, characteristic of 
its promoters and consequent in their follow- 
ers, it was without doubt the working out of 
the undying hostility of the evil spirit against 
Christ and His Kingdom. Indeed, the very 


228 THE EXILED KING 


men who pretended to be the vindicators of 
the honor of Jesus Christ, against the super- 
'stition and idolatries of the Catholic Church, 
began very early to doubt His Divinity. We 
have shown that Protestantism is essentially 
Nestorian. The movement had hardly begun 
than the fact proved the theory, and zealous 
promoters of the new doctrines acknowledged 
their growing unbelief. From Calvinism 
some passed to the open profession of Arian- 
ism; maintaining that this was its logical 
development.” What Anabaptists thought 
of Christ, they probably hardly knew them- 
selves. The Lutheran doctrine of Christ 
solely the vicarious victim bearing the punish- 
ment of our sins, led to conclusions utterly in- 
consistent with the fact of His Divinity, as for 
instance, that He despaired on the Cross, lost 
the beatific vision, and so really experienced 
the punishment of the damned. ‘These fatal 
errors survive to this day throughout all Pro- 
testantism that retains any idea of Christ the 
Redeemer; and are to be met with even among 
such Episcopalians, as imagine themselves 


207 Janssen Hist. Germ. People Vol. IV, Book 1, cvii. 


WE WILL NOT HAVE THIS MAN 229 


quite Catholic both in doctrine and in prac- 
tice. 

The Protestant Reformers rejected the 
Kingdom, and so lost the King. The very 
royal name became strange to them. The 
name of Jesus was on their lips; that of Christ 
was hardly heard. 


CHAPTER XIII 
CHRIST CALLING IN THE NIGHT 


A remarkable characteristic of Protestant- 
ism is the extraordinary prominence its 
preachers and writers give to Old Testament 
history. We say history in contradistinction 
to Old Testament type and prophecy. ‘These 
all foretold the Kingdom and the King. 
They could have nothing for men who had re- 
jected the Kingdom, and would not have 
Christ to reign over them;*°* who Jhae 
brought the Sovereign Lord so low, as to make 
of Him a necessary convenience, upon whom 
they might lay their sins; in view of whom 
they might sin more freely, since by multiply- 
ing the number and increasing the gravity, 
they would glorify God the more. It is quite 
false to say that with Protestantism came in 
the knowledge of the Scriptures. ‘The writ- 


208 Luke xix, 14. 
230 


CHRIST CALLING 231 


ings and sermons of pre-Reformation times 
testify to a knowledge of scripture among the 
people who heard the word, far more univer- 
sal than that of the later day. And this is 
quite natural. The Old Testament, says St. 
Paul, is the figure of the New. It is the 
schoolmaster bringing us to Christ the King. 
Every word, therefore, when duly pondered is 
eloquent of Him. To the Reformers taking 
it for itself alone, much of the Old Testa- 
ment was unintelligible. The New Testa- 
ment, too plain a witness of the Kingdom, was 
to a great extent unacceptable. 

Thus it came about that the personal ele- 
ment in Christ grew more and more obscure, 
so far as the system was concerned. Children 
knew all about the little Samuel, Isaac, Moses. 
The Child Jesus, the boy, St. John the Baptist, 
whom their fathers had known so intimately 
were strangers tothem. Indeed to dwell upon 
their history, to supply from a pious imagina- 
tion what history omits, was considered 
spiritually unhealthy. So too Miriam and 
Hannah, Deborah and Ruth, took the place 
of the Blessed Virgin, St. Elizabeth, the Holy 


ade THE EXILED KING 


Sisters of Bethany. The Egyptians perishing 
in the Sea and David slaying Goliath were 
frequent illustrations of Bible Stories. To 
paint the sick at the pool of Bethesda, with 
an application to holy baptism, or Our Lord 
on the Cross triumphing over death 
and hell, would have been looked on as pop- 
ish. nists 

We must mention another phase, an un- 
pleasant one, of the reversion of Protestantism 
from the New Testament to the Old, on 
account of its importance in showing that 
the Reformation was really, what the facts we 
have just adduced would indicate, a reaction 
from Christianity towards Judaism. This 
characteristic of all its forms, was especially 
noticeable in Calvinism, whether in Germany, 
France, Hungary, Poland, England, Scotland, 
or’ America. [he leaders made the”explogs 
of Israel against the idolaters of Canaan the 
justification of their exploits. The Christian- 
ity of the Kingdom, which they termed Pop- 
ery, was the idolatrous worship they were 
divinely commissioned to extirpate. In Great 
Britain Episcopacy, or as the Presbyterians 


CHRIST CALLING 233 


and Independents, both North and South, 
termed it, Prelacy, was the enemy, because it 
was held to be but one step removed from 
Popery. The ministers had the denunciations 
of the Prophets by heart, as well as the wars 
of the historical books, using in their fanati- 
cism the former, to stir up their hearers to the 
vengeance of the latter against Catholics; 
charging these, the worshippers of Christ in 
His fullness, with all the abominations of 
heathendom. For this they imagined them- 
selves to have the divine commission of Moses, 
Josue, Gedeon, Saul, Elias; whose language 
they used and whose deeds they emulated. 
The Christian law of feast and fast they abol- 
ished. To observe the days of Our Lord’s 
Birth, Manifestation, Death, Resurrection, 
Ascension, and the Proclamation of His King- 
dom on Pentecost to all the world, was for 
them Popish superstition savoring of the visi- 
ble Kingdom. The Kingdom and the King 
must disappear. On the other hand, they 
transferred to Sunday the meticulous observ- 
ance that constituted the Jewish Sabbath. In- 
deed the very terms, Sunday, or the Lord’s 


234. THE EXILED KING 


Day, were put aside for the Jewish title, the 
Sabbath. ‘The exercise on that day of Chris- 
tian liberty, became Sabbath-breaking. Sab- 
bath prayer and Sabbath preaching replaced 
the Mass of the Lord’s Day, Sabbath 
Schools were gradually brought in, instead of 
parochial catechizing. ‘They forgot that Old 
Testament and New had the same author, 
God. ‘They forgot that the former was the 
preparation for the latter, which became its 
perfection; and that the deeds commanded by 
God against a world in revolt, could not be a 
general rule for Christian against Christian. 
They forgot the teaching of St. Paul that all 
such things were for us but figures of the fu- 
ture given for our correction.”°® In a word 
Puritanism was Judaic, antichristian. 

It flourished from the middle of the six- 
teenth to the end of the seventeenth century. 
To it were due the brutal civil wars in Ger- 
many, Poland, Hungary, Bohemia, culmin- 
ating in the Thirty Years War. It caused 
the religious ‘wars in France. It sanctioned 
the piracies of Drake, the slave-hunting of 


av¥ gs Cor, (xn: 


CHRIST CALLING 235 


Hawkins, their ceaseless harassing of Spain 
and Portugal. Puritanism drew the sword 
against the king in England; it gave birth to 
the Covenant in Scotland, and sent the Camer- 
onians to the hillside to bewail a perjured 
realm and a broken Covenant, ready to chas- 
tise the one and to avenge the other. Puritan- 
ism carried New England across the sea to set 
up a pentateuchal theocracy intolerant of 
everything not agreeing with the Judiac con- 
cept of itself as the chosen people amidst gen- 
tile nations and tribes, Canadian Catholics, 
Indian idolators, prowling Quakers and Bap- 
tists, against whom it was always ready to un- 
dertake God’s work at the cry of: “The 
sword of the Lord and Gedeon’’.?” 

But with the succession of generations, Pro- 
testantism became for many the religion in 
possession. Its origin in apostasy was for- 
gotten. The Catholic Church was unknown, 
or rather was supposed to be known according 
to the calumnies that had become traditions. 
So side by side with the Judaic, antichristian 
Puritanism grew up a certain evangelical 


210 Judges vii, 20. 


236 THE EXILED KING 


piety, tainted, it is true, through contact with 
the Puritan spirit, yet in its essence alien to it. 
The character of this new spirit was a deep 
sense of personal relations with Our Lord 
Jesus Christ joined with a tendency to ignore 
all dogmatism. All the formulas of predes- 
tination, election, effectual call, conversion, 
assurance, might be on the lips of the one 
asked for a profession of faith, but they did 
not reach the heart. They might in a passing 
way puzzle the understanding; they did not 
affect the will. They were safe between the 
covers of the catechisms; they did not deter- 
mine conduct. Jesus Christ was not merely 
the Lamb of Luther and Calvin—we might 
better say, the scape-goat—on whom the sins 
of the world were laid. For the devout soul 
He was: “My Saviour, my God, my All”. 
Of this Evangelicalism, “To find Jesus” was 
the formula, meaning much more than the 
mere laying hold of Him by faith, that is, in 
the confidence that my sins have been trans- 
ferred to Him, that an angry God has been 
appeased, and there is nothing now for me to 
fear. Whatever its imperfection, Evangeli- 


CHRIST CALLING 237 


calism was a religion of prayer, of good works, 
of Christian conduct, and above all of love. 
This element of love constituted the essential 
difference between it and the theoretical Re- 
formation Protestantism its adherents were 
supposed to profess. 

Such was the fact. Of it there can be no 
doubt. Those who with the movement begin- 
ning in the early nineteenth century came to 
the Church in England, America, Germany, 
Holland, Scotland and other Protestant coun- 
tries, are unanimous on the point. What is 
the explanationr Simply this, that the charity 
of Christ is broader and deeper than the 
malice of men. “God is no respecter of per- 
sons; but in every nation he that feareth 
Him and worketh justice, is acceptable to 
rai CrlOry, honor, peace to every one 
that worketh good, to the Jew first, and also 
fomtiemerceeky 2 For God awill shave all 
men saved and come to the knowledge of the 
truth’”.*** Christ came from heaven to save 


211 Acts x, 34, 35: 
212 Rom. ii, 10. 
213 y Tim, ii, 4. 


238 THE EXILED KING 


all. The malice of the individual can cut off 
from the grace so offered himself alone. 
Thus far it can go, and no farther. It can 
not cut any other off from salvation. No 
malice of men or of devils can exclude the 
grace of redemption from any region of the 
world or from any human soul. “The spirit 
of the Lord hath filled the whole world” ; ?** 
while Our Lord Himself foretold: “And I, 
if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all 
things to myself”’.?*° 

Nevertheless it would be the height of un- 
reason to conclude from this fact against all 
evidence to the contrary, that God is satisfied 
with morality and cares nothing for dogmatic 
religion. In the first place, the Evangelical 
placed no confidence in mere morality. His 
religion rested on dogma. Christ is God. 
Christ is Man. Christ has redeemed me His 
creature. I owe Him all my love, all my 
service. Secondly, such a dogmatic system is 
essentially incomplete, transitory. Man is 
social. He must associate with others. Such 


214 Wisdom i, 7. 


215 John xil, 32. 


CHRIST CALLING 239 


a notion of Christ the Redeemer, of Christ 
the Lord, leads necessarily to that of Christ 
the King. In fact, nothing was closer to the 
Evangelical heart than the longing for the 
society of the saints, denied, as was thought, to 
earth. It craved the King and His Kingdom. 
The throne, the crowns, the harps of praise, 
the Lamb the centre of everlasting adoration, 
made for it the climax of the Resurrection. 
‘‘Mine eyes shall see the King in His beauty. 
I shall behold the land afar off’”,?*® was the 
support of many a devout soul walking 
through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, 
fearless of evil.*** Indeed, were one to question 
our assertion that Evangelicalism was essen- 
tially distinct from the Protestantism of revolt, 
which is tantamount to saying that it was a 
returning to Catholic Christianity, he could 
find a convincing proof in the use of the 
scriptures made by each. The Evangelical 
lost utterly the Judaizing antichristian fero- 
city, we saw to be characteristic of Puritanic 
use. For him his Bible became once more, 


216 Isa, xxxili, 17. 
217 Ps, xxii, 4. 


240 THE EXILED KING 


what it had been from the beginning, the Gos- 
pel of the Kingdom. 

The Evangelical looked to the Kingdom in 
heaven. He was ignorant of the Kingdom on 
earth. Nevertheless all that he had of vital 
Christianity came to him from its spirit, 
which the King omnipotent spread to every 
corner of the world. It was drawing him to 
this Kingdom; for only through the earthly 
Kingdom is there entrance into the heavenly, 
since the two are one. All the operations of 
the earthly Kingdom were working on his be- 
half. The prayers and penances of cloistered 
religious, the good works of the uncloistered, 
the sacrifices of the missionaries, the blood 
they shed as martyrs of Christ, the piety 
of Christian men and women in their fam- 
ilies, the innocent worship of children, the in- 
cessant praise going up from monastery, — 
minster and cathedral, the King Himself, 
Priest and Victim on ten thousand altars, all 
reached out to him. He was living daily 
more and more in the spirit of the Kingdom. 
Sooner or later God would enlighten him, 
perhaps only at the last moment, and then he 


CHRIST CALLING 241 


would accept the call; and unknown to all 
save the King and himself, become a member 
of the body of Christ's Kingdom on earth, 
to pass a moment later to the eternal Kingdom 
of the Redeemed. 

This is the meaning of the expression: To 
belong to the soul of the Church. 

Puritanism, which culminated in the seven- 
teenth century, may be said to have died with 
it. Under primitive social conditions, as in 
rural New England and Scotland, it persisted, 
modified however by the Evangelic move- 
ment, and shorn of much of its Old Testament 
ferocity. But in general the eighteenth cen- 
tury saw it give place among the lettered to 
a polite scepticism which, as it busied itself 
with revealed religion, took the less alarming 
name of Deism. Among the great middle 
class, succeeded a sort of ceremonial worship 
to be frequented with decency. In England 
it had a national character, as something 
bound up with the British Constitution, and 
a guarantee against Popery and the Pretender. 
For cottiers and laborers it had no message 
save the obligation of submission to their bet- 


242 THE EXILED KING 


ters. Had it not been for personal Evangel- 
icalism, these would have been for all 
practical purposes without any Christianity. 
Aspirants to the honors of the Establishment 
wrote great books on the Trinity, or the Divin- 
ity of Christ. These had the effect intended, 
Their authors sat among the Peers of the 
Realm as Bishops, Peers of Parliament. But 
they had no other effect. In the meantime 
from England passed to the Continent the 
writings of such men as Hobbes, Hume, To- 
land, Locke, to be the foundation of the infidel 
philosophy preparing the Revolution, and 
paving the way for Kant, the father of every 
modern error. With them, too, went the 
secret society, in which was to be worked out 
the details of the great revolt against all that 
bears the name of God, or retains any trace of 
the Kingdom of His Son. 

This was the direct reaction against the 
arrogance of Protestantism, a physical effect 
similar to the strain of the bent bow against 
the force that bends it. It had nothing in 
common with the tenderer Evangelicalism— 
in Germany it was called Pietism—which was 


CHRIST CALLING 243 


not a reaction so much as a spiritual cure 
designed by God’s Providence to lead the 
King’s willing subjects back to their alle- 
giance. Evangelicalism was, therefore, as all 
remedies must be, merely transient. It was 
a movement; and all movement is temporary. 
Movement is directed towards a term. It 
ceases for two reasons, either because the term 
is reached, or because its attainment becomes 
impossible, physically or morally. Now the 
history of Evangelicalism shows plainly that 
it gathered strength as vital religion until the 
wonderful era of the revival of faith was 
reached in the second and third quarters of the 
nineteenth century, when to so many the vis- 
ion of the Kingdom with the call to reenter 
it was vouchsafed. It is a mistake to look on 
the beginning of the Tractarian movement as 
the point of departure. This would be to 
make the universal movement a matter of a 
single sect. Tractarianism was but an epi- 
sode, and a brief one, if compared with 
Evangelicalism. It was for many a stepping- 
stone, but not for all. Those who used it 
could look back to their own Evangelical 


244 THE EXILED KING 


antecedents, and tell the very day and hour 
when the first accounts of the new teaching 
aroused in them the sense of realities hitherto 
unknown. But many passed directly from 
Evangelicalism into the Kingdom without its 
aid. Let us consider the facts. 

The movement from the thirties to the six- 
ties of the nineteenth century was coextensive 
with Protestantism. Few to whom religion 
was the eternal reality, escaped its influence. 
If comparatively few were, by their corres- 
pondence to grace, found among the chosen— 
we say comparatively, because absolutely their 
number was great and the authority of their 
piety and learning was greater still—it is 
nevertheless certain that the number of those 
called with a greater or less insistence is be- 
yond reckoning and known to God alone. 
But with the seventies the movement slack- © 
ened. Conversions continued, they always 
will continue, as long as the Kingdom stands 
with the Vicegerent of the King calling sub- 
jects back to their allegiance. But neither the 
multitude nor the é/an of former years was 
there. Notice now that simultaneously with 


CHRIST CALLING 246 


the slackening of the Romeward movement, 
Evangelicalism and its offspring, Tractarian- 
ism, began to decay. No longer forces lead- 
ing men back to the Kingdom, they lost their 
vital power. They protestantized themselves 
throughly, making formal antagonism to 
Rome the very reason of their existence. To- 
day they are but names of two qualities of 
Protestantism, and both are saturated with the 
essential virus of Protestantism, the antago- 
nism to the idea of the Divine King in His 
Kingdom of Eternity. The antagonism is no 
longer Lutheran or Calvinistic. It is never- 
theless essentially unchanged in modern Ra- 
tionalism. 

Rationalism rejects the Kingdom and the 
King, because it will not tolerate the super- 
natural. Its beginning manifests itself in an 
impatience of what in dogma is deemed ir- 
reconcilable with reason. Thus the impera- 
tive demand in the Kingdom for the subjection 
of every understanding to the obedience of 
Christ *** is resented. Then follows the ar- 
raigning before weak individual reason, al- 


eee Cary ux, iss 


246 THE EXILED KING 


ready rebellious, of the mystery of the 
economy of grace. Recognizing how this 
contains mercy for all, St. Paul exclaims: “O, 
the depth of the riches of the wisdom and of 
the knowledge of God! How incomprehensi- 
ble are His judgments, and how unsearchable 
His ways’!°'° Such a height of the super- 
natural the Rationalist refuses to attain. He 
remains aloof, murmuring to himself, harden- 
ing his will against all dogma by his impa- 
tience of the infinite God. So he comes to 
reject the first dogma uttered by the divine 
lips of the King Himself, expressing the act 
whereby the natural man is raised to the super- 
natural, transferred from darkness into the 
Kingdom of Light: “Unless a man be born 
again of water and the Holy Ghost, he can 
not enter into the: Kingdom of. God?a? 
Hence it is that the world today is full of the 
unbaptized, deprived of their heritage in the 
Kingdom. With these the work of reconcili- 
ation must begin from the very foundation. 


v9 ROM, | X1,13 39 
220°John ‘iti, /'5 


CHRIST CALLING 247 


Here we see perhaps the saddest effect of 
the revolt against the King; souls who have 
lost the Kingdom and are ignorant of their 
loss. 


CHAPTER XIV 
CHRIST THE EXILE 


In Rationalism is found the modern antago- 
nism against the Kingdom of Christ, replacing 
the hostility of Protestantism, inasmuch as this 
claimed the status of a religion. It is not 
violent, as were Lutheranism and Calvinism. 
It will not, unless greatly provoked, slay the 
defenders of the Kingdom, though it is quite 
willing to deprive them of home and liveli- 
hood, and so starve them to death. But what 
it will not do, some of its children, Socialism, 
Communism, Nihilism, have done already, 
and may do again. Unless the Kingdom and 
its defenders prove stubborn when told to dis- 
appear from a world that has no longer any 
place for them, Rationalism is too cultured to 
persecute physically. At moral persecution, 
that is, at calumny, misrepresentation, con- 
tempt, affected pity for ignorance that is non- 


existent, it is an adept. 
248 


CHRIST THE EXILE 249 


The Socialist or Communist, inheriting 
through the Revolutionists of the past the 
Lutheran and Calvinistic ferocity, says boldly 
that Christianity is an imposture contrived by 
priests and princes for the enslaving of the 
people. Itis therefore to be destroyed utterly 
in the death of its last defender. Such men 
have had their day, and in it have shown what 
they can do. That this day will return is 
more than probable. Rationalism, which sup- 
plies the generally accepted principles of 
modern conduct, is not an enemy of Revolu- 
tion. Considering the brutal directness of 
extreme measures to be unworthy of modern 
culture, it would, no doubt, express a theoretic 
disapprobation of them. But theoretic dis- 
approbation would include the practical apol- 
ogy not altogether new: ‘‘Blood-thirstiness is 
always deplorable. Nevertheless, we must 
remember that today the wrongs of centuries 
are being righted. No wonder that the agents 
in the work are carried away by passion. 
Still their principles are sound. We cannot 
imperil the triumph of principles, by inter- 
fering to prevent some momentary disorder 


250 THE EXILED KING 


necessarily connected with their assertion”. 

In his heart the Rationalist hates Christian- 
ity not a whit less than does the partisan of 
social revolution. His method is more in- 
sidious, and of its nature more promising. 
A man defends his property against open at- 
tack, generally with a good hope of success. 
The midnight thief takes advantage of the 
hours of sleep to strip him of his goods. ‘To- 
day in what concerns their eternal interests 
men are not on their guard. Charity has 
grown cold.**t For an immense number 
Protestantism has accomplished its purpose, 
in destroying utterly the idea of the King in 
His Kingdom; of the loving service due Him; 
of His absolute rights over men His subjects; 
of the constitution of the Kingdom; of the 
solidarity of its members, bound together un- 
der the visible authority of the Vicar of the 
King; of the laws and customs of the King- 
dom obligatory on all. Protestantism in re- 
ligion, Revolution in the civil order, had the 
same end to attain: the isolation of the indi- 
vidual man spiritually and materially in pres- 


eau Miatt  XXiv. 2s 


CHRIST THE EXILE 251 


ence of a world power becoming irresistible; 
and both have come within sight of its attain- 
ment. 

Men no longer speak of laying their sins on 
Jesus, of laying hold of the merits of Christ 
to cover the essential corruption of their na- 
ture. They do not dispute about predestina- 
tion. Indeed the question, once so disturbing: 
am I of the number of the elect or am I des- 
tined to eternal perdition?, troubles very few 
today. Nevertheless, though the particular 
applications of earlier Protestantism have lost 
their place in its system, its fundamental prin- 
ciple, that religion is an affair purely private 
and personal, was never stronger. In former 
times the principle was merely the contradic- 
tion of the Catholic doctrine of the Kingdom, 
that men redeemed by Christ were thus 
brought into His Kingdom, in which salvation 
was to be worked out socially in the same way 
for all, by laws and precepts coming from 
Christ the King directly or through the au- 
thority He established. The way was clear. 
It included sacraments efficacious in them- 
selves, through their institution by Christ, the 


252 THE EXILED KING 


King. ‘There was the way of the command- 
ments for Christians in general, and the higher 
way of the counsels for clergy and religious, 
according to the vocation of each. For all 
there were the corporal and spiritual works 
of mercy performed within the militant 
Church. ‘There were fasts and abstinences, 
processions and pilgrimages, prayers and 
praises, prescribed by ecclesiastical authority. 
Above all and giving life to all was reverent 
submission of the will and judgment to the 
dogmatic teaching of our Mother, the Spouse 
of Christ, animated with His Spirit. In one 
word there was the reducing to practice of the 
faith professed in the creed: I believe in the 
Holy Catholic Church.??? All this earlier 
Protestantism denied. Nevertheless it left no 
one free. ‘To be saved each must believe. 
But his belief was not to be an intellectual 
assent to truth objective, universal, immutable, 
on the authority of divine revelation addressed 
to all mankind, a faith not the less reasonable 
because supernatural. An inevitable subjec- 
tive conviction was demanded that a new fact, 


222 St. Ignatius. Spir. Ex. Rules for thinking with the Church, 


CHRIST THE EXILE 253 


contingent and personal, had come to exist, 
and that it was the foundation of a new rela- 
tion betwen the individual soul and its Crea- 
tor. The fact was the actual application of 
Christ’s atonement to the individual sinner: 
the relation, that the sinner, now amongst the 
elect, was incapable of ever falling away. 
This, transcending all possible reason, a pri- 
vate revelation, with no standard for its verifi- 
cation, exposed to all the vagaries of a vivid 
imagination, a doctrine unheard of except 
among the secret Gnostic sects, was, as we 
have seen, a theological novelty reduced in 
Gnostic manner to shameful practice by the 
protagonists of Protestantism. It was never 
really held in all its fullness by their devout 
successors. As for the indevout, its unrea- 
sonableness was with them its destruction. 
All that remains then, of early Protestantism, 
is the naked principle that religion is a purely 
personal matter, with its logical extension to 
no religion. 

What the result of such a principle must be, 
and how it could not but facilitate the work 
of modern Rationalism, is easy tosee. If man 


264 THE EXILED KING 


is the creature of the Divine Creator—and 
this is the foundation of Christianity—the dis- 
charge of his duty to his Creator must be his 
principal obligation. Under such circum- 
stances the principle that religion is something 
purely personal comes to this. Every man 
enters this world involved indebt. His cred- 
itor has no agent on earth to determine how, 
when, and where the debt is to be paid. 
There is no one authorized to give a receipt 
for it. Hence the mode of payment, the time 
of payment, the place of payment are all left 
to the debtor himself. When he professes to 
be satisfied that the debt is paid, his inner 
consciousness must serve for the receipt. 
From this it is not a great step to say that 
his inner consciousness must determine the 
amount of the debt; and if his inner conscious- 
ness can manage to say there is no debt, then 
for him there isnone. One might answer that 
he would be obliged in this to yield to 
the common consent of mankind. But this 
would be to make the affair of salvation a pub- 
lic social affair, a contradiction of the prin- 
ciple. If one has to yield to authority in the 


CH RS te Be Xo 255 


case, God certainly must have provided one 
proportionate to the importance of the matter. 
It would therefore be more reasonable to 
submit to the authority of Christ in His King- 
dom, than to the vaguer consent of mankind, 
so vitiated today that a clearly expressed 
universal opinion in the matter is, for the 
moment, not so easy to obtain. Another will 
say that if there is a debt, it must be paid; 
and should one leave this world without pay- 
ing it, it would have to be paid in the future 
world. But if God has made the payment 
an affair of this world, so that in the future 
life there is no payment, but only punishment 
of positive default; and if, moreover, in mak- 
ing religion a purely personal affair, He has, 
as we have seen, left the matter entirely in 
the hands of the debtor, it is very clear that 
positive default becomes in practice a con- 
tingency not worth reckoning with. 

This is the view of the world today. Men 
and women live and die thinking of everything 
but what follows death. Indeed death is not 
to be mentioned. People pass away instead 
of dying. They are supposed in a vague sort 


256 THE EXILED KING 


of way to be at rest. Nevertheless their rest 
is not the hope of resurrection. The cemetery 
becomes a memorial park. For a brief space 
they are remembered. ‘That their dead bones 
can live again, occurs to few; and to these it 
comes as an old world fable that mankind has 
outgrown. ‘The funeral of today has returned 
in all essentials to the old pagan “Salve atque 
vale’, words which, whatever they had once 
of hope, had, as Varro tells us, become a for- 
mula of eternal parting from those never to be 
seen again. “Salve eternum mihi eter- 
numque vale’”.?** Farewell! Farewell for- 
ever! 

One of the wisest of the Greeks pointed out 
how to change the meaning of words in order 
to cover up conduct, so as, for example, to call 
rashness, fortitude, and prudent caution, cow- 
ardice under the mask of virtue, must bring 
the gravest calamities upon the body politic. 
This so impressed a Roman historian, that he 
transferred the apophthegm to the Roman 
Senate, attributing it to no less a personage 


223 7Eneid. xi, 97. 


CHRIST THE EXILE 257 


than Cato of Utica.”** What then must we 
think of those who, following a similar course, 
call Protestantism, with Rationalism its last 
expression, Christianity; as if any modern re- 
ligion, in which, even as a moral teacher, 
Christ hardly finds a place, could for a single 
moment be identified with the glorious King- 
dom of Our Lord Jesus Christ, which Apos- 
tles preached, for which martyrs bled? The 
term remains in all its universality. He who 
made it what it was, has no place init. One 
may deny His divinity, His miraculous con- 
ception and birth, His miracles and teachings, 
His resurrection and ascension, and still be 
recognized as a Christian, not by general 
opinion only, but officially by every single 
sect. Outside the Catholic Church the old 
Christianity is dead and Christ is an exile, for- 
gotten by those He has created and redeemed. 


224 Thucyd. iii, 82; Sallust Catil. 52. 


CEAPILE Rae vy. 
THE KINGDOM INVINCIBLE 


Outside the Catholic Church the old Christ- 
lanity is dead; in the Catholic Church it 
flourishes in perpetual youth, ever ancient ever 
new. This is the necessary consequence of the 
identity of Christianity with the Catholic 
Church: ‘I will ask the Father and He shall 
give you another Paraclete, that He may abide 
with you forever, the Spirit of Truth, whom 
the world can not receive, because it seeth 
Him not, nor knoweth Him. But you shall 
know Him, because He shall abide with you 
and shall be in you’’.?*° Equally the conse- 
quence of that identity is the loss by Protes- — 
tantism of its Christian title: “They went out 
from us, but they were not of us. For if they 
had been of us they would, no doubt, have re- 
mained with us’”’.??° For some time the loss 

225 John xiv, 16, 17. 


226 y John ii, 19. 
258 


THE KINGDOM INVINCIBLE 259 


was not felt by the losers. In leaving the 
Kingdom of Christ they had carried with 
them something of its tradition and law, so 
that they kept up among themselves and in the 
eyes of the world a semblance of Christianity. 
But now the facts have produced their logical 
results in those who went out, “that they may 
be manifest that they are not all of us’.?*" 
This indubitable truth that Christianity in 
its true sense is today confined to the Catholic 
Church, is curiously the direct contradictory 
of the popular assertion current among Pro- 
testants for so long. It is thus an example of 
how often popular assertion is absolutely 
wrong, because founded on ignorance and 
prejudice. For centuries Protestants took for 
granted that the Reformation was a return to 
the pure Gospel as preached by the Apostles, 
which the Catholic Church had corrupted, 
overlaying it with human, or rather, diabolical 
traditions. Among these they reckoned the 
Catholic doctrine of the sacraments, of the 
primacy of Peter, of the priestly character 
and function, of monastic vows and religious 
227 Thid. 


260 THE EXILED KING 


perfection, of the infallibility of the Church, 
of the communion of saints with all its practi- 
cal consequences of devotion to the saints and | 
especially to the Mother of God. With the 
course of time they saw in the decrees of 
Trent, in the devotion of the Sacred Heart, in 
the definition of the Immaculate Conception, 
in the Vatican Council and papal infallibility, 
new departures from the faith once committed 
to the saints. [hey denounced the Babylonian 
harlot with Our Lord’s denunciation of the 
Pharisees: “Who bind heavy and insupport- 
able burdens and lay them on men’s shoul- 
ders’,?** and cursed the Roman Pontiff with 
the curse of the Apocalypse: “If any man 
shall add to the words of the prophecy of this 
book, God shall add to him all the plagues 
written therein”.°” They did not understand 
that the Church of God is a Kingdom; and 
that, as a Kingdom, it has its defence against 
its enemies, not in weapons of earthly war- 
fare; *°° “for our striving is not against flesh 
228 Matt. xxiii, 4. 


229 Apoc. xxii, 18. 
230 John xvili, 36. 


THE KINGDOM INVINCIBLE 261 


and blood, but against principalities and 
powers, against the rulers of the world of 
darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in 
the high places”; 7** in one word against the 
arch-enemy of Christ, its King. Nor did 
they understand that its defence is infallible, 
“the girdle of truth, the breast plate of justice, 
the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, 
the sword of the spirit, which is the word of 
God”.?*?, Separated from the living body 
they were unable to fathom the deceits of the 
devil, to recognize as attacks on Christian 
faith, his detractions from the royal honor paid 
the King, in Himself, in His Mother the 
Queen, in the princes of His court, with wor- 
ship and devotion, new in form but eternally 
old in essence, “ever ancient, ever new’’.?*8 
Their proud self-confidence forbade them to 
acknowledge in what they called novelties, 
the Kingdom’s counter attack directed by the 
infallible Spirit of Truth, against the insidious 
warfare of the kingdom of darkness. Yet 
281 Eph. vi, 12. 


282 Ibid. 14-17. 
283 Aug. Conf. x, 27. 


2602 THE EXILED KING 


such is the very truth. What they deemed 
corruptions of the faith were the bulwarks 
of the faith built up under the guidance of 
God Himself, for the protection of the visible 
immortal spouse of “the King Immortal, in- 
visible, to whom be honor and glory forever 
and ever, Amen’”’.”** 

Of this we have a notable example in the 
devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which 
against opposition from both within the 
Church and without, is now world-wide, and 
regarded as the means given by Our Lord 
Himself to arouse in all Christians zeal for 
His Kingdom. Calvinism had in the six- 
teenth century invaded France, and had been 
vanquished. Nevertheless it had not been 
cast out. Privileges had been granted, and 
it lay entrenched in the country a peril both 
to religion and to the state. By degrees, how- 
ever, religion was reaffirmed and the strength 
of heresy, reduced. While this was taking 
place Jansenism grew up, a crypto-Calvinism, 
Calvinistic in its nature, yet claiming for itself 
the character of the purest Catholicism. Its 


2342 Tim. i. 17. 


THE KINGDOM INVINCIBLE 263 


theology was Calvinistic. In practice it with- 
drew all, secular and religious alike, from the 
sacrament of Penance and from Holy Com- 
munion, under pretext of a higher asceticism 
and loftier devotion. Its end was to destroy 
the constitution of the Church, its infallible 
teaching authority, and this as centred espe- 
cially in the Holy See. The Paris Parlement 
supported the new heresy, which flattered its 
desire of religious independence. The world 
generally accepted a doctrine, which allowed 
it to omit under the guise of piety, the prac- 
tices of religion, while retaining the Catholic 
name. As time went on Jansenism passed to 
other countries, and received the support of 
the civil power. 

In central France there is a little town, 
Paray-le-Monial, far away from the stir 
and bustle of the great world. In it is 
a modest Visitation convent, where during 
the last thirty years of the seventeenth century 
lived a holy nun, Margaret Mary Alacoque. 
She received many graces of prayer; and one 
day Our Lord revealed to her His divine 
Heart inflamed with a wondrous fire. “My 


264. THE EXILED KING 


Heart” He said, “‘is so full of love of men, that, 
unable to contain within itself the flame of 
its burning charity, it must needs spread them 
abroad by your means’. On another occasion 
He declared: ‘My great desire to be loved 
by men makes Me give them in these latter 
times this last proof of My love, the dis- 
closing to them of My Sacred Heart as 
a means most efficacious to engage them 
to love Me”... Later’ still He ‘cried: eae 
this Heart which has loved men so much, 
that it has spared nothing even to the 
exhausting and consuming of itself to tes- 
tify its love for them. In return I receive 
from the greater number ingratitude, coldness, 
contempt, sacrilege, in. the Sacrament mar 
Love’. Again, when Margaret Mary com- 
plained of the obstacles she met in carrying 
out His commands, He encouraged her with — 
the words: “I will reign in spite of those 
who oppose me”. 

There were other apparitions and other 
words regarding the propagation of this won- 
derful worship of the Sacred Heart, the sym- 
bol of that all-embracing love which redeemed 


THE KINGDOM INVINCIBLE 265 


ite Gyorld. But those four words mark out 
clearly its progress from its first idea to the 
complete concept of what is now an integral 
part of the worship of the Saviour-King 
throughout the Catholic Church. The first 
is a striking manifestation of the Saviour’s 
love and a declaration of the world’s need of 
a lively knowledge of it. The second is the 
demand of love for love, coupled with the 
assurance that the end of all things draws near 
and that the revelation of the Sacred Heart is 
the last means reserved for these latter times 
to win that love. The third expresses the 
Saviour’s deep, comprehensive sense of the 
wrong done Him in withholding that love, 
and, what denial entails, in repaying Him 
with forgetfulness, ingratitude and insult. 
The fourth is an assurance of the Saviour’s 
final triumph over all His enemies, and of His 
world-wide reign. 

Here we can see outlined very clearly the 
Saviour’s design in revealing the devotion to 
the Sacred Heart. It is no less than the re- 
conquest by love of a world which has for- 
gotten love, the confirmation by love of His 


206 THE EXILED KING 


Kingdom, which is daily rejected by hearts 
that have never felt the pure flame of love for 
the Saviour-King. It begins with redeeming 
love. It goes on to stir up responsive love. 
It continues in establishing the Redeemer’s 
right to this love from those He has redeemed ; 
and the profound wrong he suffers, not only 
in the positive insults and ingratitude of man- 
kind, but also in that growing forgetfulness of 
Him which today culminates in making Him 
an exile. The last is the assurance of success, 
and of the exaltation forever of the Kingdom 
of redeeming love. It is the confirmation by 
our Divine Lord Himself of the Catholic doc- 
trine, the motive of this little bock, that love 
for the Redeemer and the confession of His 
royalty in His visible Kingdom on earth are 
inseparable. Reject the Kingdom and love 
perishes: cease to love and the Kingdom is © 
forgotten. 

Our Lord does not exhibit a vague love; He 
does not demand a vague love. He exhibits 
Himself not as loving us from His throne in 
another world, the heaven above us, but as he 
lives among us in the Sacrament of His love. 


THE KINGDOM INVINCIBLE 267 


In this He gives us the definite object of our 
love, Himself beneath the veil, His Heart, the 
symbol of a love that mystically exhausts 
and consumes Him, in the effecting amongst 
men of this perennial demonstration of love, 
which no created intelligence could have con- 
ceived, than which we can imagine none 
higher. 

The ultimate object of this devotion is the 
reconquest of the world for the Kingdom. 
This, its working out confirms. It began 
within the narrow walls of the monastery of 
Paray, with the adoration of the Sacred Heart 
as the symbol of redeeming love. Soon was 
added at Our Lord’s command the practice 
of reparation, the Holy Hour, in which to 
watch with the agonizing Saviour in Gethse- 
mane, to make up for a neglectful world 
buried in the sleep of sin. ‘Then, as the devo- 
tion began to spread abroad among the people 
came the frequent acts of reparation, which 
are the special work of the Confraternity of 
the Sacred Heart. This developed into the 
Guard of Honor, whereby, hour after hour 
members succeed one another under various 


268 THE EXILED - KING 


titles of service, thus consecrating the un- 
broken day to reparation. Simultaneously 
with these grew the practice of Communion 
of Reparation, to console the Divine Heart 
for the outrages committed against the Sav- 
iour of men in His Sacrament of Love. Here 
we must note that nothing, perhaps, has served 
more effectively than this practice to prepare 
the way for that frequent communion, which, 
as His infallible Vicar tells us, is today Our 
Lord’s providential measure for the welfare 
of the Church at large and of its members in 
particular. 

So for a hundred and fifty years the great 
work developed with a vigorous growth that 
even now, after nearly another century, shows 
no sign of decay. Just before the middle of 
the nineteenth century, a phase of the devotion 
that had hitherto been rudimentary, as it had — 
been such in the first elements revealed to the 
Saint of Paray, took a sudden development 
corresponding to the triumph of the Kingdom 
promised in the later revelations. It has not 
supplanted the earlier practices. ‘These re- 
main, essential elements of the worship of the 


THE KINGDOM INVINCIBLE 269 


Sacred Heart. They must be so; for they are 
the fulfilment of the Lord’s command. But 
according to the evident providence of the 
same Lord, whether we consider the terms of 
the revelation or the facts of its working out, 
the first place in the devotion has been assumed 
by the Apostleship of Prayer. This, inas- 
much as it is the perfection and crown of the 
devotion, encourages and strengthens the older 
practices; which, indeed it has taken to itself 
always equivalently, in general, actually; giv- 
ing them a new impulse by opening to them 
a new objective. 

Hitherto the work of devotion to the Sacred 
Heart of Jesus had been, apparently, the 
bringing of the individual soul to a clearer 
perception of its relations to the Saviour, and 
of His rights over it, and the consequent stir- 
ring up in it of an ever-growing service of 
love. “Love for love,” was its watchword: 
“Make my heart like Thine,” its prayer. In 
a word, by it God according to His provi- 
dence, was making the soul more and more 
“conformable to the image of His Son’’.?* 


235 Rom. viii, 29. 


270 THE EXILED KING 


What was latent in such a development of the 
interior life, of such, “growth in grace and in 
the knowledge of Our Lord and Saviour, 
Jesus Christ” **° we can easily see. Then it 
was not manifest. But the moment appointed 
by God to make it evident, had come. 

In Vals, a little town of France, the land of 
the Sacred Heart, there was in 1844 a Jesuit 
scholasticate, the spiritual charge of which 
had been confided to Father Gautrelet. He 
was very devout to the Sacred Heart, a man of 
more than ordinary enlightenment in things 
of the spirit. To him it was given to see 
clearly how universal, and universally active 
is the love of the Sacred Heart; the vlowe 
which had drawn from heaven the Eternal 
Word to seek and save that which was lost,?*" 
to leave the ninety and nine to go after the one 
straying from the flock.?** Now, no less than. 
during the Saviour’s mortal life, that love is 
active. ‘Thou sparest all, because they are 
thine, O Lord, thou that lovest souls”.?*° The 


286 2 Peter iii, 18. 
237 Tuke xix, 10. 

238 Matt. xvill, 12. 
239 Wisdom xi, 27. 


THE KINGDOM INVINCIBLE 271 


Holy Mother of God did but give utterance 
to the longings of a Heart perfectly con- 
formed to the Heart of her Divine Son, when 
she said to Father Bernard Colnagho: 
“Bring me souls, Bernard, bring me souls, re- 
deemed with my Son’s Blood.” Our Lord 
in the Sacrament of Love leads an apostolic 
life. In it is the seed of immortality, in it is 
the virtue that, as it were, deifies the receiver 
so that he dwells in Christ and Christ in 
him.**° ‘Thither He calls His sons out of 
Egyptian darkness, drawing them with the 
cords of Adam, with the bonds of love.**? 
This being so, it follows immediately that 
the service of love paid to the Lover of souls 
must pass beyond personal relations, however 
intimate, to become apostolic. This truth, the 
corollary of the first revelation, formally con- 
tained in those that followed, which had never 
been absent from the practice of the devotion, 
Father Gautrelet made the foundation of the 
Apostleship of Prayer. He established it 
among the scholastics under his charge. 


240 John vi, 55, 57- 
241 Osee xi, 2~4. 


272 ahah cede Eis LA aN e 


From Vals it spread to other houses of the 
Society; and soon, organized and propagated 
by Father Ramiere, it was found everywhere 
in the Catholic Church. 

Prayer is the elevation of the soul to God. 
Whatever then, can be lifted up with the soul 
and offered to God has in it the power of 
prayer. Our good works, our sufferings of 
body and mind, our daily work, our recrea- 
tions, all that goes to make up life, if ruled by 
the will seeking first the Kingdom of God and 
His justice,** can be the matter of prayer, 
enabling men to fulfill literally the injunction: 
“Pray without ceasing’’.*** Thus to direct all 
our actions, offering them for the conversion 
of heathen abroad, heretics and schismatics at 
home, sinners everywhere, is the essence of the 
Apostleship of Prayer. 

But the conversion of heathens, heretics, — 
schismatics and sinners, means necessarily the 
increase, peace and prosperity of the Kingdom 
of Christ on earth, its eternal consummation in 
heaven. Wherefore “Thy Kingdom Come” 


242 Matt. vi, 33. 
2483, Thess. v, 17. 


THE KINGDOM INVINCIBLE 273 


in all its amplitude of meaning became the 
great ejaculatory prayer of the Apostolate, en- 
kindling and keeping alive in the hearts of its 
members the clear flame of love for Redeem- 
ing Love in His unceasing work in the world, 
His work in souls, the objects of His Love, 
and in His Kingdom which He rules in the 
person of Tis Vicar. Lastly, because in 
God’s providence the devotion to the Sacred 
Heart, and the Apostleship of Prayer its 
crown, were reserved for these latter days, in 
which the powers of darkness use all that is 
in the world to assail the Kingdom and Christ 
the King in His Vicar; the Church with the 
Pope, its head, the supply of its needs, its de- 
liverance for dangers, its final triumph, not 
by the destruction but by the conversion of 
its persecutors, constitute the supreme object 
of the universal prayer: “Thy Kingdom 
Come”: : 

Such is the wonderful devotion of the 
Sacred Heart. It is in fact, no less than the 
reassertion to an apostatizing world of the 
whole divine work of man’s redemption. 
What Protestantism has obscured and its off- 


274 THE EXILED KING 


spring, infidelity, now denies, it proclaims as 
clearly as did the apostolic voice in the begin- 
ning of our faith: the Word Incarnate to 
redeem fallen man; His redeeming love 
ever yearning for souls; His perpetual work 
of grace in His Sacrament of Love, reaching 
out to sinners in spite of ingratitude, neglect, 
and the rejection of obstinate unbelief. It 
tells of the certainty, in spite of hell’s fury, of 
final triumph, beginning in the Kingdom on 
earth in which is the King’s twofold reign, 
visible and vicarious in His representative on 
the throne of Peter, invisible and personal 
from the secret recess of the Tabernacle; to 
be consummated in the eternal Kingdom in 
Heaven, in which He will reign supreme, 
visible in all His glory. It asserts the uni- 
versality of the Kingdom to which by its 
absolute right every soul is subject, the un- | 
limited supremacy of the King to Whom every 
knee must bow.*** It calls every faithful soul 
to its appointed work for the elevation of the 
Kingdom by the subjection of the world, 
wherein Christ will conquer, not in the blood 


244 Philip ii, ro. 


THE KINGDOM INVINCIBLE 275 


of His enemies, but in the boundless power 
of His own Blood. 

Such a reassertion of the Kingdom of Christ 
as the very essence of Christianity, was a 
challenge to which the kingdom of darkness 
quickly responded. It arrayed the Crypto- 
Calvinism of Jansenism against the Sacred 
Heart. Civil governments calling themselves 
Catholic, took the Jansenistic side and per- 
secuted the growing devotion. The Tuscan 
government took upon itself a task in which 
the greater powers, France, Spain, Naples, 
did not care to be involved. Under its pa- 
tronage Scipio Ricci, Bishop of Pistoia, stood 
forth as the champion of all Jansenism and as 
the mouthpiece of its hatred of the Sacred 
Heart. In his diocesan synod he condemned 
the devotion in the strongest terms. This con- 
demnation was the beginning of its justifica- 
tion. In the Bull Auctorem Fider, Pius VI. 
condemned most solemnly the synod and all its 
errors, making mention, among others, of its 
reprobation of the devotion to the Sacred 
Heart. From the beginning the Revolution 
has consistently treated the devotion as an 


276 THE EXILED KING 


enemy; which for us is a guarantee, if guar- 
antee were needed, that it comes from heaven. 

Today, as The League of the Sacred Heart 
and the Apostleship of Prayer, the work has 
received its full organization. It stands an 
eloquent witness to the immortality of Christ’s 
Kingdom, deprived though this be of material 
resources, the object against which every 
earthly power is arrayed ; and to the impotence 
of the kingdom of darkness with every ma- 
terial means at its command, to overthrow 
God’s merciful work for man.”* 


245 Acts v, 34-39. 


EPILOGUE 


To you, dear Reader, I put the question 
proposed to the Pharisees as vital by Our 
Blessed Lord Himself: “What think you of 
Arise hi ey ou Have received Flim) let us 
assume as an inheritance from an elder day, 
in which He was loved as the Redeemer on 
whom every hope of heaven rested. You have 
not lost that love. Yet you feel that you are 
not living in the old atmosphere of love. 
Jesus Christ is still a name. He is gradually 
ceasing to be a reality in the denomination to 
which you belong. “We preach Christ cru- 
cified, unto the Jews indeed a stumbling block, 
and unto the Gentiles foolishness; but unto 
them that are called, Christ the power of God 
and the wisdom of God”’.*47 Yet who of your 
ministers preaches Jesus Christ, God and 
Man, the power and wisdom of God, by 

246 Matt. xxii, 42. 


e872) COTE 1 (23, 24. 
277 


278 EPILOGUE 


Whom all things were made,”** and, at the 
same time, the Man of Sorrows acquainted 
with infirmity,?*® bearing our sins in His own 
body on the tree,”*° yet reigning from the very 
tree on which He is lifted up, drawing all to 
Himself,?** making them to God a King- 
dom,?*? in which He reigns forever and 
ever? ?>3 If one be found here and there to 
preach this gospel in some way—it is nowhere 
heard in its fullness outside the Catholic 
Church—he is recognized as an exception; 
and often regarded as a survival of a type that 
has no place in the modern religious world. 

This is the sad fact, the modern world has 
no place for Jesus Christ. In civil society 
the revolutionary state is frankly antichristian. 
Those coming down from Christian times 
have, by every step of the process of the so- 
called reform, gradually dechristianized 
themselves. The religious world renounces 

248 John i, 3. 

249 Isa, lili, 3. 

2507 Peter ii, 24. 

251 John xii, 32. 


252 Anoc. v, 10. 
253 Luke i, 32; Apoc. xi, 15. 


EPILOGUE 279 


Christ. Whatever individuals may think, 
there is no Protestant sect from the Church of 
England and the Protestant Episcopal Church 
in America, down to the lowest depths of Uni- 
tarianism, that does not at least tolerate in its 
ministers, errors concerning Our Divine Lord 
that are destructive of His Godhead, His Mis- 
sion, His Atonement, His Gospel. 

To this the answer comes immediately. It 
does not deny the fact but boldly justifies it. 
With a changing world, we are told, the whole 
aspect of religion must change. The middle 
ages are dead. The old monarchies are ex- 
tinct. The social organization compacted of 
the intimate dependence of man on man, 
vanished, with the feudalism that created it. 
Factories and machines have supplanted the 
craftsman and the handicraft, putting an end 
to the close organization of towns and cities 
by their organized trades. ‘The entire mental 
attitude is different today from that of former 
times. The old idea of a stable philosophy 
resting on a foundation of unchangeable truth 
has perished. It has been succeeded by a 
philosophy of perpetual change, not resting 


280 EPILOGUE 


upon truth, but continually advancing towards 
an absolute true, and absolute good, never to 
be actually attained. Of this the consequence 
is that human apprehensions of the true and 
the good are in themselves partial and imper- 
fect. For the circumstances of persons, time 
and place, they may be looked on as the true 
and good of the moment; but as such they can 
be relative only, changing continually with 
changing conditions. Everything is good and 
true in its own time and place in the evolution 
of things. Taken out of its time and place 
nothing retains a necessary intrinsic goodness 
or truth. This is the universal law. To it 
religion must conform inevitably. 

This is a succinct, but comprehensive pre- 
sentation of modern theory, with which no 
Evolutionist will quarrel. It is the very 
antithesis of Christianity, summed up for us 
in St. Paul’s famous formula: “Jesus Christ, 
yesterday and today, and the same forever”’.?** 
It is a shameless confusion of the essences 
of things with their accidental modifica- 
tions, of antecedents and consequents with 


254 Heb. xiii, 8. 


EPILOGUE 231 


causes and effects. ‘The middle ages are 
dead; but human nature survives unchanged. 
The old monarchies are extinct; but human 
society is essentially the same. What was 
essentially right in the social life of the 
middle ages, is essentially right today. What 
was essentially wrong in the old mon- 
archies, is essentially wrong today. Both 
the one and the other are to be measured 
by the unchangeable verities of man’s social 
nature. ‘he compact social organization of 
former days was not a mere accident to be 
identified with either feudalism or handi- 
craft. It was the natural inevitable outcome 
of man’s social nature developing naturally; 
just as the labor organizations that disturb 
us today are the inevitable reaction of that 
same social nature against an artificial social 
state in which its natural development has 
been interrupted. The passing of the old 
order was no necessary step in social evo- 
lution. It was the effect of the usurpation 
of an unnatural absolutism, offspring of 
the pagan imperialism of the idolatrous 
Roman Empire, and the rejection of the 


282 EPILOGUE 


Christian State, created by human social 
nature christianized. The old philosophy 
resting on unchangeable truth has not per- 
ished. It cannot perish. It is rejected be- 
cause, resting on objective realities, it leads 
to the Absolute Reality, God, the essential 
Truth, the Supreme Good; and in its place 
is brought in an indefinite something called 
protoplasm by some, force by others, some- 
times the Ego and Non-Ego, or again the 
Idea, without any definite beginning, working 
out to an end never to be attained, necessary in 
its evolution, therefore necessary in each phase 
of its evolution. From this inevitableness of 
each phase is deduced immediately that each 
in its turn is right; and the consequent corol- 
lary of a mutable truth and a variable mo- 
rality. » 

Thus we return to the point from which we 
set out. The modern world rejects the Cre- 
ator and His Kingdom of Creation. It rises 
in rebellion against the Redeemer and His 
Kingdom of Grace. The sects go with the 
world; and so Christ is an exile in the world 
He has redeemed. 


EPILOGUE 283 


In the Catholic Church alone has Jesus 
hist F115 trues nome. Lhere’ Fle 1s ta be 
found, its sovereign centre, the Saviour-King 
ruling the multitude of His redeemed, who 
pay Him homage, who serve, who obey, not 
the less willingly and lovingly because hom- 
age, service, obedience are the obligation of 
the Kingdom. Jesus Christ the King, is in 
the midst of it, the Lamb slain from the begin- 
ning of the world,’ the object of its con- 
tinual worship and praise, the moving prin- 
cipiom or all benencence, ot: all. charity, ‘of 
all zeal for others’ welfare; for Christ the 
King is served in the serving of His sub- 
jects,"°® who are members of His Body, of His 
flesh and of His bones,**” so that the least He 
Calis iaisibrethren.-” Heis the life of all; 7” 
not only because by His redemption He re- 
stores all to life, but also because by His 
sacraments He preserves them in that same 
life, and gives a supernatural character and 

285 Apoc. xiii, 8. 
256 Matt. xxv, 35, 36. 
257 Eph. v, 30. 


ss Viatt. XXV,_ 40, 
259 Col, iii, 4. 


284. EPILOGUE 


value to the elements of the natural hfe. In 
brief, the Kingdom of Light shines with in- 
creasing brilliancy as darkness thickens over 
all the world, because, ‘“‘the glory of God hath 
enlightened it and the Lamb is the lamp 
thereon. 

What think you of Christ? Is Hea reality 
to youoranameonly? Is He your only hope, 
your salvation, your love, your life? Is He 
for you the propitiation for your sins,** the 
author and finisher of faith? 7°? The apos- 
tasy of the world, the complacency of Protes- 
tantism, to say the least, in that apostasy; we 
may add, its participation in that apostasy, all 
proclaim that you, the servant of Christ can 
have no place in the sects. Your true home 
is waiting for you. Its doors are open to 
receive you. Come then to, “the city of the 
Living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to — 
the company of many thousands of angels, 
and to the church of the firstborn who are 
written in the heavens, and to God, the Judge 

260 Apoc. xxi, 23. 


261; John ii, 2. 
262 Heb. xii, 2. 


EPILOGUE 286 


of all, and to the spirits of the just made per- 
fect, and to Jesus the Mediator of the new 
testament, and to the blood speaking better 
things than that of Abel’.?** 

But perhaps you have begun to lose your 
hold on Jesus Christ; so that He is indeed 
hardly more than a name to you. Go back to 
your youth. ‘Trace up your forefathers. It 
was not so with them. Why should it be so 
with your You have not rejected Christ; but 
the sect to which you belong, in which you 
were born, has carried you away. ‘There is 
but one “‘Mother of men”, “the Jerusalem of 
the free’.°°* What is there for the usurper 
but the dry breasts that nourish not, so that her 
children, wandering among the nations, are 
cast away and perishe*®° 

263 Heb. xii, 22-24. 


264 Gal. iv, 26. 


265 Osee ix, 14-17. 


CONSECRATION 


Begun by Leo XIII., renewed by Pius XL., of 
the whole human race to the Sacred Heart of 
the King. 


Most sweet Jesus, Redeemer of the human 
race, look down upon us humbly prostrate 
before Thy altar. We are Thine and Thine 
we wish ever to be. But to be more surely 
united with Thee, behold each one of us freely 
consecrates himself today to Thy Most Sacred 
Heart. Many indeed have never known 
Thee. Many, too, despising Thy precepts, 
have rejected Thee. Have mercy on them all, 
most merciful Jesus, and draw them to Thy 
Sacred Heart. Be Thou King, O Lord, not 
only of the faithful, who have never forsaken 
Thee, but also of the prodigal children who 
have abandoned Thee. Grant that they may 
quickly return to their Father’s house, lest 


they die of wretchedness and hunger. Be 
286 





CONSECRATION 287 


Thou King of those who are deceived by error 
or estranged by discord, and call them back to 
the harbor of truth and unity of faith, so that 
soon there may be but one flock and one Shep- 
herd. Be Thou King of all those who are 
still involved in the darkness of idolatry or 
of Islamism, and refuse not to draw them all 
into the light and Kingdom of God. Turn 
Thine eyes of mercy towards the children of 
that race, so long the chosen people; and may 
the blood they once called down upon them- 
selves, now also descend upon them, the laver 
of regeneration and life. Grant, O Lord, to 
Thy Church assurance of freedom and im- 
munity from harm. Give peace and order to 
all nations; and make the earth resound from 
pole to pole with one cry: Praise to the di- 
vine Heart that wrought our salvation; to It 
be glory and honor forever, Amen. 


THE END 





INDEX 


A 
Almsgiving. Strict obligation 
in the Kingdom, 172, ff. 


Title of poor to receive, 
177, ff How practised in 
Ages of Faith, 177, 178. 
Supernatural joy in its ex- 
ercise, 181, 182. Discour- 
aged in modern world, 183. 
State aid economic, at best 
altruistic, ibid. 
Apostles. Princes 
Kingdom, 38, 39. They un- 
derstood the fact, 4o. Erred 
in idea of the Kingdom 
in details; no essentia! error, 
41, ff., 50. Errors corrected 
during the Forty days, 45. 
Ambassadors of Christ, 60. 
Apostleship of Prayer, 269, ff. 
Its diffusion, 271, 276. Its 
relation to the Kingdom, 
272, ff. 
Arianism. Attacked the Roy- 
alty of Christ, 88, ff. 
Auctorem Fidei. Bull con- 
demning Synod of Pistoia, 


a7 s, 


in visible 


B 
Barbarossa, Frederick. Brings 
back pagan imperialism, 
202, ff. 


289 


C 
Calvinism. Judaic, 232, ff. 
Charlemagne. Crowning of, 
115. 


Christ. Known only in His 
Kingdom, 197, 278, 280, 283. 
Christendom. Its beginnings, 
IOI, 109, 111, ff. Meaning 
of, 117, ff. Its two powers, 
119. The Church an estate 
of every realm, 133, ff. 
Passes away not through 
intrinsic | weakness, but 
through human frailty and 


malice, 199, ff. Otho and 
Barbarossa prepare its 
fall, 202, ff. Thirty Years 
War its death: Treaty of 
Westphalia its funeral, 
204. 

Christianity. Is dogmatic, 


therefore unchangeable, 12, 
13, 280. Identified with un- 
changeable Christ, 14. 
Proved by death of martyrs, 
ibid. Survives today only 
in Catholic Church, 258, ff., 


283. 

Cobbett. “History of Refor- 
mation,” 139. 

Communism. In Ages of Faith 


sporadic, connected always 
with heresy, 172. Modern, 
development of Protestant- 


290 
ism through Rationalism, 
248, ff. 

Consecration of World to the 
Sacred Heart, 286. 

Constantinople. Its jealousy 
of Rome, source of heresies, 
106, ff. Final break with 
Rome, 108. 

Coronation of Kings in Chris- 
tendom, 129, ff. 

Corporal Works of Mercy. 
The law of the Kingdom, 
171, ff. Confraternities for, 
179. Religious Orders for, 
179, 180. 

Corpus Christi. A feudal 
homage in its celebration, 
144. 

Councils, The Great. Prove 
Christianity essentially dog- 
matic: held to be detri- 
mental by Protestants, 84, ff. 

Creation. The notion of cor- 
rupted today, xii. 

Creator. His Kingdom _ ob- 
scured, xvi; Consequence 
of denial of Kingdom of 
Christ, xvil. 

Cross. Sign of in Christen- 
dom: Protestant horror of, 
140, ff. 


D 
Dark Ages. So-called, gravely 
misrepresented, 128, ff. 


Decrees of Councils, new devo- 
tions, papal definitions; 
Signs of a living authority, 
not changes of faith, 260, ff. 

Dogma. Characteristic of 


INDEX 


Kingdom, 56. Impediment 
to sole Protestant doctrine 
of vicarious atonement, 57. 

Du Chaillu. “Viking Age,” 
137. 


E 


Empire Eastern. Though 
christianized, retains the old 
pagan theory, 109. 

Empire Western. Christian in 
spirit, 3115, ff. In itself 
never a failure, 200. Dig- 
nity of its head, 201. 

Ephesians. Key to its sense 
the doctrine of the Kingdom, 
60. To Protestants with 
justification by faith only 
it is unintelligible, 63. 

Ephesus. Council of, 92, 221. 

Evangelicalism. A return to- 
wards the Kingdom, 235, ff. 
Ignorant of Kingdom on 
earth, knew Christ as King 
and the heavenly Kingdom, 
239. Sole vital religion in 
Protestant countries, 241, ff. 
Origin of movement of nine- 
teenth century, 243. Trac- 
tarianism due to it, ibid. 
A spiritual remedy, there- 
fore transient, 243, 244. 
Romeward movement ceas- 
ing, became antagonistic to 
Kingdom and Rationalistic, 
245. 

Evangelicals. Held  theoreti- 
cally to Luther and Calvin; 
practically to Gospel of the 
Kingdom, 66, 239. 


ae ge ee ee ee, ee 


ee ee Te ae ee 


INDEX 


Evil. Analogy between physi- 
cal and moral known to 
ancient world, especially to 
Jews, 35, 36. Opening His 
war against kingdom of 
satan by healing diseases 
and casting out devils, Our 
Lord declares the nature of 
His Kingdom. ibid. 


F 


Facts. Four fundamental of 
history, 3. Foundations also 
of Christianity, 5. 

Faith. Justification by. For 
Protestant doctrine St. Peter’s 
sermon in cenacle sufficient, 
no need of mission of Holy 
Ghost, 46. Destructive of 
real religion, 210, 211, 215, 
2275 

Fall, Memory of the. Retained 
in the old law by temporal 
chastisements, 146, ff., and 
by propitiatory sacrifices, 
147, ff. 

Frederick Barbarossa. Brings 
back into Christendom the 
pagan imperial idea, 202, ff. 


G 


Goods, temporal. Before civil 
power man is their owner. 
In Kingdom of Christ he is 
a steward only, 172. 

Gospel. Not of — salvation 
merely, but of salvation in 
the Kingdom, 49, 50. Com- 
prehensively it is Faith in 
Jesus Christ. Extensively it 
is all He reveals, 49. 


291 


Grace, Restoration by. Neces- 
sary for membership in the 
Kingdom: Protestants, re- 
jecting the Kingdom, deny 
it, 59. It is clearly taught 
in the Scriptures, 60. 

Green, J. H. “History of the 
English People,” 139. 


H 


Haidahs. The Northmen of 
North-West America, 138. 
Henry of Hereford, Usurping 
English Crown, signs him- 
self with the Cross, 142. 
Heresies. Do not destroy unity 

of Church, ros. 

Heretical Attacks. Imitate the 
devil’s tactics in tempting 
Our Lord, 93. A war of 
five centuries against the 
Kingdom, proves its im- 
mortal vitality, 97. 


I 


Iconoclasm. Diabolical  vio- 
lence of, 94, ff. Character- 
izes all Protestantism, 95. 
Originated with — secular 
power, having no shadow of 
theological foundation, ibid. 
Violence renewed in Re- 
formation, 216, Catholic 
practice not idolatrous, ibid. 

Idolatry, its true nature, 
153 ff. 

Infallibility. Active in teach- 
ing Church: passive in 
Catholic conscience, 91. 


292 
J 


Jansenism. Calvinistic; an- 
tagonistic to the Kingdom, 
262. To sacred Heart, 275. 
Janssen. “History of the Ger- 
man People,” 139. 

Jesus Christ. His titles to the 
Kingdom, Creator,  Re- 
deemer, 32. Conqueror, 33. 
The King in His Kingdom 
the very substance of Chris- 
tianity, 47 ff. To baptize in 
name of, formula, not of 
sacrament, but of subjection 
to King, 50. Protestantism 
pretending to vindicate His 
honor, began to doubt His 
Divinity, 228. Errors in 
this matter found in every 
sect, ibid. All have virtually 
renounced Him, 257, 277. 


Jews. Understood the King- 


dom essentially, 36, 50. Re- 
jected Our Lord because He 
did not preach the Tempo- 
Yal.sti 

Judaizing in Protestantism, 
230, , In Calvinism, 232. 
In Puritanism, 235. 


Judgment, Last. Description 


of completes doctrine of 
parables of the Steward, the 
Virgins, the Talents, 173, ff. 
Not undogmatic, but sum- 
marizes the whole law of 
the Kingdom, 175, ff. 


K 
Kingdom of Christ. Estab- 


INDEX 


lished, 16. Not figuratively, 
19. A spiritual, ibid. Not 
inferior to temporal king- 
doms, 20. But superior, 21, 
22. It has its law, ibid. 
It is made perfect in heaven, 
23, 24. On earth it uses 
material goods, 25. Con- 
forms to the law of growth, 
32. It is at war with the 
kingdom of satan, 34, 37. 
Opening of campaign de- 
clares nature of the war, 35, 
In a way intelligible to all the 
world, ibid. Especially to 
Israel, 36, 50. Christ. sends 
Apostles to carry on the war, 
38. With a perpetual mis- 
sion, ibid. Organization of 
Kingdom communicated es- 
sentially during the Forty 
days, 45. Jews rejected it 
because it did not meet their 
ideal, 57. Pagan Rome, be- 
cause of its reality, 66, ff. 
Universality of Kingdom 
taught from the very begin- 
ning, 103, ff. Visible King- 
dom replaces visible king- 
dom of satan, 152. All that 
proclaimed the Kingdom, 
Protestantism rejected. 
Whatever it introduced is 
alien to Kingdom, 227. 


Kingdom. Strict sense of term 


requires community of nature 
and similarity of condition 
between prince and people, 
58. 


Kingdom of satan. Established 


in fall of Adam, 33. Organ- 


INDEX 


ized coextensively with the 
world, ibid. In conflict with 
Kingdom of Light, 34. A 
despotism, rather than a 
kingdom, 55, 58. 

Kingdoms, Temporal. Mate- 
rial and apparent longevity 
compared with perpetuity of 
Kingdom of Christ, 97. 

Kings in Christendom anointed 
and crowned, 129 ff. From 
this, not from _ personal 
piety, their office of protec- 
tors of the Church, 131. 


L 


Laus Perennis, The. 188. 

Liturgies, Early, exhibit full 
idea of the Kingdom, 72 ff. 

Loyalty, A paradox, 80. Finds 
its solution in man’s social 
nature, 81. Supposes per- 
sonal relation, 56. 

Loyalty to Christ. Demands 
visible, dogmatic, infallible 
Church, 56. A perfect soci- 
ety, 81, ff., of Martyrs, 82. 


M 


Maitland. “Dark Ages,” 139. 

Margaret Mary Alacoque, St. 
263. 

Martyrs. Proclaim the King- 
dom, 76, ff. And the King, 
78, ff. 

Mary, B. V. Attacked in 
Nestorianism, 90, ff. Prot- 
estantism continues the at- 
tack, 91. Special hatred of, 


293 


shown by Reformers, 219. 
Queen of Heaven and Moth- 
er of God, 220. Both 
bound up in true doctrine 
of Incarnation, ) 22%; 225: 
Council of Ephesus, 92, 221. 
Nestorian error explained, 
221, ff. Image of Mary in 
every church proclaims In- 
carnation, 225. 

Mass. The frequenting of in 
Christendom, a vassal-serv- 
ice, 143, ff. Hated by Prot- 
estants, 226. Centre of 
Catholic worship and com- 
plement of Incarnation and 
literal fulfilment of proph- 
esy, ibid. 

Modern Christianity. Not that 
of Christ, 15, ff. Rational- 
ism makes it purely private 
affair, 252. Without any 
definite matter or sanction, 
253, ff. 

Monastic Almsgiving, 178. 

Monastic Corruption. Exag- 
gerated, 164, ff., 187. Satire 
not to be accepted literally, 
188. Even in relaxed houses 
the general life was purer 
than that of accusers, 165. 
Monastic life had in itself 
the element of reformation, 
ibid. 

Monastic 
service of praise and 
pitiation, 150, ff., 159, 163. 
Its nature explained, 156, 
187, 188. In it prince and 
people had their part, =32, 
189. Sovereigns promoted it 


Worship. Social 
pro- 


294 


officially, 132, ff., 161, ff, 189. 
Closely bound up with honor 
of the King, 165. Irrecon- 
cilable with mere vicarious 
atonement, ibid. 


N 


Nestorianism. Attacking the 
Incarnation, attacks the King 
in His Kingdom, 90. Error 
explained, 221. 

Nihilism. Development of 
Protestantism through Ra- 
tionalism, 249. 

Nobles. Their alms, 178. 


O 


Office, the Divine. Essentially 
praise of the King, 189, ff. 

Old Testament History. Prot- 
estant attachment to, 230, ff. 

Organization of Kingdom. 
Traceable in Acts, 51. 
Church of Ephesus founded 
by St. Paul, the instrument 
of Christ, not autonomous, 
but integral part of King- 
dom, 52. Church of Apostles 
a Kingdom, 53. With law 
to be obeyed through love, 
54. Protestant doctrine of 
election takes away need of 
any organization, 210. 

Otho the Great. Prepares the 


break-up of Christendom, 
202, ff. 

P 
Peter St. Conscious of kis 
ofice in the Cenacle, 45. 


INDEX 


Rock of the Church, 99. 
His authority exercised from 
the beginning, 103. 

Pietism. See Evangelicalism. 

Pistoia. Synod of condemned, 
Zak. 

Poor and Suffering. In Chris- 
tendom held to represent 
Christ, 173. 

Propitiation. Servile in pagan 
worship, 146, ff. In Israel, 
filial, 148, ff. 

Propitiation and praise. Per- 
fect in Christendom, 150, 
163. 

Protestantism. Lost confidence 
in itself, 47. Denies visible 
Kingdom, 209. Its idea 
would have been unintelli- 
gible to Jews, 50. Its notion 
of spiritual worship false, 
150, ff. Its doctrine of elec- 
tion takes away all need 
of ministry, 210. Pretend- 
ing to vindicate the pure 
Gospel, has lost it, 260. Is 


essentially’ Nestorian, 91. 
All modern, Rationalistic, 
245. 


Puritanism. Judaic, 234, ff. 
Changes to Deism, 241. 


R 


Rationalism. Development of 
Protestantism, 245. Unchris- 
tianizes men by  num- 
ber of unbaptized, 246. 
Leads to Socialism, Commun- 
ism, Nihilism, 248, ff. Es- 
sentially one with them 


haw te™ |  . ” 


7 oe oe 


INDEX 


against the Kingdom, 250. 
Reconstruction of ancient life. 
Danger of error in, 136, ff. 
Reformation. Destroyed Chris- 
tian liberty, 203. Brought 
in Absolutism, 204. Ended 
in Revolution, 207. Made 
religion of people matter of 
prince’s choice, 212. 
Religious Truth. Is unchange- 
able, 280. 
Revolt. The two-fold, against 
two Kingdoms of Nature 
and of Grace, xvii. 


S 


Sacred Heart. Devotion to, 
263. Calls souls to the 
Kingdom, 264, ff. Has prom- 


ise of victory, ibid. De- 
velopment, 267. Antago- 
nism of world to, 275. 


Synod of Pistoia against, 
ibid. 

Sects. Have renounced Christ, 
278. Justify their renuncia- 
tion on Evolutionary theories, 
279, ff. 

Socialism. Its power rests on 
distorted view of truth, that 
no man can be absolute 
lord of his possessions, 167. 
Impossible in Christendom, 
172. A development of 
Protestantism through Ra- 
tionalism, 245, ff. 

Soul of the Church, 241. 


ae 


Temporal Power. Pope can 


295 


not be deprived of it, 26. 
He can not renounce it as a 
mere temporal prince might 
do, ibid. Because he is 
administrator only, 27. He 
can, for the good of the 
spiritual order, give it up, 
27. Whether to be done or 
not, he is sole judge, 28. 
Whatever be done, a pure 
concession, ibid. 

Tenth Century. Dark period 
of Roman Church, 201. 

Tractarianism. Founded in 
Evangelicalism, 243. Fail- 
ing in its true effect, it be- 
comes Rationalistic, 245. 


V 


Veneration of Saints, 217. 
Bound up with complex or- 
ganization of Kingdom, 218. 
Vicarious Atonement. Not 
the sum total of Christian- 
ity, 47. Protestant doctrine 
impious, 214, ff. 


Ww 


Walsh. “Thirteenth Century,” 
139. 

William the Conqueror. Typi- 
cal founder of Monasteries, 
162. 

World, The. To be _ recon- 
quered by Sacred Heart, 265. 








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